Proposals for closing projects/Radical cleanup of Volapük Wikipedia

The result of the following proposal for closing a WMF project is to KEEP the project. Please, do not modify this page.

The following discussion is closed: result: keep. MF-Warburg 14:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I propose to close this discussion within 7 days from, i.e. on 28. January, and to announce the result then. --MF-Warburg 15:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a request about closing the Volapük Wikipedia. This is a request about deleting all minor bot generated articles in Volapük Wikipedia and moving it back to the Wikimedia Incubator.

Detailed rationale:

There had been a request closing Volapük Wikipedia, which has resulted in a keep decission for the time being out of various reasons such as the historical impact of Volapük.
Mainly people were simply upset by the massive robot generated articles (more than 100'000 in a very short time frame) of the virtual single Volapük Wikipedia contributor Smeira and were angry about a flood of new mainly useless interwiki links in their Wikipedias, cheating of edit statistics compared to their non-primarily bot generated Wikipedias, abuse of Wikimedia ressources, no use of the bot articles for interested readers and many more (see the old closing proposal for more points). Furthermore a Wikipedia driven by a single person is not in agreement with our principles such as the Neutral point of view.
In contrast to every other Wikipedia that used bot generated articles to a larger extent, almost 100% of Volapük Wikipedia content (page numbers and bytes) were generated by a bot and therefore almost every article contains the same sentences with just different numbers. Wikipedia is not a database of uniform entries (such as numbers). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia which predominantly incorporates summary texts describing the unique features of its items in indvidual texts.
The Lombard Wikipedia had among other things a similar problem with bot generated articles (and therefore also had a request closing it). All minor bot generated articles of Lombard Wikipedia were deleted in order to make room for a healthy Lombard Wikipedia (the number of articles therefore dropped from 117'000 to 23'000).

I therefore ask for adminship rights in Volapük Wikipedia or any other appropriate measure in order to remove the articles from Volapük Wikipedia, which were not written or substantially expanded by humans. Furthermore I ask to move Volapük Wikipedia to the Wikimedia Incubator until it has a steady community of contributors. e I think this is a fair and balanced request, which should be adapted to similar cases in future if it works out. Arnomane 22:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support request

Support. Arnomane 22:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
May I ask why you don't want to close it, but want to move it to the Incubator? It's a little bit ... --OosWesThoesBes 11:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
...to small in real encyclopedic size and too small in community (see above I answered this prior to your question in my request). Arnomane 11:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I hope you have considered MF-Warburg's and Slomox's points below. There are thousands of human-created stubs on vo.wp that you presumably would not delete. The final size would still be too big for the incubator (where the average project has only a few tens of articles). How do you propose to solve the problems MF-Warburg mentions? --Smeira 00:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

...exaggerated, since you haven't even discussed this question within the vo.wp community itself (you, Arnomane, haven't addressed this question yet). --Smeira 12:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Petar Marjanovic 01:36, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support DaB. 03:31, 26 December 2007 (UTC) Fewer then 3% of edits are made by humans the last 30 days [reply]
Note that 95% of these edits improved quality by correcting erros, adding new information, etc. --Smeira 12:37, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ureinwohner 10:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Aphaia 11:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --APPER 11:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Liesel 11:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but better close Spampedia altogether. Fossa_?! 15:11, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The arguments you mentioned in the closure proposal were answered. Would you happen to have anything new to add -- other than offending labels like Spampedia? --Smeira 01:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't even vote in the closure proposal, as it appeared futile to do so, let alone put forth some arguments. The flooding of Volapuek-Interwikis is certainly not my high priority amelioration project. So, Death to Volapuek will do for now as my argument. Fossa_?! 14:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say you voted in the closure proposal, I merely said the arguments you mentioned there had been answered. It's good that you've come out of the closet as a Volapük hater. That makes it easier to guess the kind of arguments you probably have. You're right: better not mention them. Have a good time working on the other items of your priorities list! --Smeira 23:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fossa please consider that your strong words aren't exactly a help for this request. Arnomane 02:39, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support, or even better close vo-WP. Chaddy 22:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A comment: someone with this username (Chaddy) has just vandalized five pages on vo.wp (check the dif links from his "contributions" page here). Do you happen to be the same person? If so, you must be aware that this is not appropriate behavior. As for closing: do you happen to have any good arguments? Please take into account the answers given in the discussion of the closure proposal. --Smeira 01:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I did not vandalize, I only proposed these articles for speedy deletion (e. g. [1]). This isn´t vandalism. But your removal of this requests without any comment (e. g. [2]) is. And that you have blocked my account after that is abuse of your admin rights. I did not want to discuss about this here, but after your comment I feel impelled to comment about this topic too.
I discuss you case below, Chaddy. Considering the occurrence of cases of real vandalism that started exactly like yours (see the proposal for closure for further documentation), I think my mistake is understandable. Now your account has been deblocked, you are a full member of the Volapük community, and you can start helping us make it a better project. There's a lot of work to do, and we sure could use some help. That's why you opened the account, isn't it? --Smeira 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@555: Stop spamming, please. Chaddy 16:17, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You have the right to vote, I have the right to know why you have voted for deletion, sorry. 555 16:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with 555. Arguments, please! --Smeira 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And what did that IP wrong? Achates 21:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, was that you? Same mistake here; read the description of Chaddy's case in the section about it below. When I read the comment, I immediately thought I had yet another de.wp vandal (there were tens of them during the closure proposal; I was really surprised with the level of aggressivity these people had). If you look at that page, you'll see that I immediately realized my mistake and restored the interwiki link (and even added a picture). --Smeira 00:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Does that really matter? It seems to me, that your half-baked vo-policy is "Germans are bad", isn't it? Cos you act that way... :-( Achates 05:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No, Achates. Actually we have German contributors as well. Smeira behaved that way because of the edit summary that you (was it you?) wrote which was, let's admit it, a not very nice one. True that he didn't realize it was a good edit at first but he promptly realized it and restored it. Malafaya 10:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely, Malafaya. Here's an example: consider the edits of User Zifs, all also about links to German Gemeinde: none of them has been reverted, despite the fact that he was German. There were many other anynonymous edits on German Gemeinde (presumably also by Germans) who corrected details and were not reverted (here's an example; notice that this anonymous user corrected the population figure). For an example of my welcome to another German -- note that I was polite to him, even though he had voted in favor of the closure proposal, and is here now voting in favor of this proposal -- see vo:Gebanibespik:Liesel). So, there is no anti-German policy at vo.wp, even though it is true that most vandals on vo.wp come from de.wp (not all, of course; there are vandals from other places too.vo:User:St. Anger started by vandalizing my home page, then had a discussion with me, calmed down, and became a normal user. He lives in Israel.) It looks to me like you're trying to invent a discrimination case against me, and used the provocation of that IP-address (I think I can safely say the edit comment was a provocation?). If this is the case, it does matter whether or not you are that IP-address, don't you think? If you are, then you behaved improperly, and with bad intentions. --83.85.142.49 11:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC) --That was me: Smeira 11:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
very strong support (if not close). This language has 20 (sic!) speakers - not only natives and had less than 10 popular years between 1880 and 1890. There is not even a small use ("market") for such a WP version (not comparable with "dead languages", which have _way more_ speakers) and it's a private project of a far to small community to have even a small chance to be NPOV (Volapük has _20_ speakers, out of which only a part will be WP users, I guess. Compare: Klingon has 16.). In short: make this a Wikia-Project at most. --TheK 23:01, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You're confusing this with a proposal for closure; since this Wikipedia will still exist regardless of the result of this vote, why are talking about "market" and making comparisons to dead languages and Klingon? But since you want to discuss the viability of Volapük instead of this proposal... Can you name the number of speakers of Old English (the Englisc Wikipedia), which you implicitly considered worthy of keeping unchanged? There are no native speakers of Volapük, but the "dead languages" that you say have _way more_ speakers also have no native speakers. How are they better than Volapük as a language? Private project: again, how many contributors does the Old English Wikipedia have? Haven't you noticed that most of the WF projects (there are so many in small languages) have very small communities, with the same POV problem you mention? Again, how is Volapük worse? And, about POV: can you mention any page on vo.wp, article or even talk page, where this potential problem -- NPOV -- is exemplified? Is this more of a "theoretical threat" that's not really real in the case of vo.wp? --Smeira 01:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
support --Histo 00:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Too many articles for such unpopular language. Most articles aren't necessary for this language.--Certh 04:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
support --Hillock65 05:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. As I stated in the closing request, I consider hundreds of thousands of practically useless interwiki edits in all WMF projects the biggest problem with this project. Note that this was not a side effect: these interwikis seem to be the main goal of the bot owner, and the rationale behind is simple: maybe some people will notice and will join Volapük Wikipedia community. This idea of attracting maybe a couple of new users with millions edits in WMF projects is exactly what makes this strategy a spam ∴ Alex Smotrov 06:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, Sasha, I had never thought about interwikis (as I made clear in the discussion of the closure proposal); I was thinking more in terms of the List of Wikipedias at Meta. It sincerely never occurred at me that someone would click on an interwiki link to Volapük just out of curiosity... There's no "maybe"; new active contributors have joined, actually. A question: why are interwiki edits useless? Because the vo.wp articles are stubs? But think: most interwiki links are to stubs, even those that are not to vo.wp. If you don't believe me, get any article with lots of interwiki links from ru.wp and then click on all the interwiki links that you see there: most of them are to small projects, where the articles are usually short or stubs. The real truth is: There are millions of short or stub-like articles in all Wikipedias, and most interwiki links are to them. If I had to guess, I'd say links to Volapük stubs are less than 10% of the total; en.wp, fr.wp, pl.wp have a lot more stubs than vo.wp, and are responsible for most of the interwiki links to stubs -- or even to bot-stubs, since there are more bot-stubs outside of vo.wp than inside of it. Would you like to check the numbers? (And there is of course the question of why you think interwiki links to stubs are useless -- what's the reason?) --Smeira 00:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Dapete ばか 07:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Yann 14:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Comet styles 15:03, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well the Proposal is about deleting all minor bot generated articles in Volapük Wikipedia and moving it back to the Wikimedia Incubator to which I agree to because its very similar to the recent clean-up of the Lombard Wikipedia where thousands of articles which were created by bots were deleted and the mess taken care of..--Comet styles 17:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A proposal in the terms of Slomox (see below) is acceptable. Even with 1 or 2 active users, Lombard Wiki did not move to Incubator. Moving it there means losing all the 'community work' (non-articles) and rewriting all that part from scratch (How would it be if all those support pages in en.wiki suddenly had to be rewritten?). Moreover, why would it be in the Incubator? vo.wiki has enough community to stay as a Wikipedia (remember there are projects accepted with just 2 participants; Volapük has at least that). As this proposal is, it's worse than closure because it will have the same effect (shutdown and moving to Incubator) but at the expense of losing most articles which wouldn't happen with simple closure. Malafaya 18:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with Malafaya. The differences between this proposal and the Lombard one, in my opinion, are:
a. bot-stubs were a smaller problem for lmo.wp, and "the" problem for vo.wp;
b. The transfer-to-incubator part makes this proposal equivalent to closure, because of the technical problems that MF-Warburg mentions below; in the lmo.wp case, the closure was more clearly stated.
c. some of the supporters of the Lombard closure proposal were from lmo.wp and were actually interested in improving the quality of lmo.wp (they are right now working on that there); none of the supporters here has ever done anything to help vo.wp, and even Arnomane, the proposer, does not seem to want to do anything positive to improve vo.wp -- at least s/he made no propositions other than deleting stubs. I don't think anybody here, supporter or opposer, really thinks Arnomane's proposal will do anything to improve vo.wp. --Smeira 23:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support Achates 21:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Jeroenvrp 03:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Projects of questionable legitimacy need to be kept on a tighter leash. -- Visviva 10:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Meldor 19:02, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Any speaker of Volapük can speak at least one other language with a real speaker base. I can't see why a group of 20 or so people are granted the privilege of having a Wikipedia just for themselves. The fact that Smeira is the only user in Volapük Wikipedia and that most of its articles are bot-written just gives further evidence that Volapük Wiki is utterly useless. Bring Volapük back to the incubator and let it try to grow - fair and square. -- Leptictidium 19:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi again Leptictidium. As I said on your talk page, there may be reasons for Wikipedias for small communities (see also the appropriate sections in the first closure proposal). But this is not so important: if this proposal is not about whether or not Volapük should have a Wikipedia, but merely about whether or not stubs should be deleted, then your reason is beside the point (i.e. you're arguing that vo.wp shouldn't exist, since it has too few speakers, and this is not the point of this proposal, as Arnomane made clear in the first sentence of his rationale). --Smeira 03:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Smeira. I am arguing that vo.wp shouldn't exist in its present state, but that it should be given a chance to improve. And I think Arnomane's proposal is a good chance and way of improving. -- Leptictidium 13:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's the perfect road for this problem.--Carles 19:43, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Dúnadan 22:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support deleting the articles generated by a bot. Otherwise the project can continue to create high quality content. --Jannex 01:47, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please be aware that by voting "support" you're voting in the proposal as a whole: deletion of articles AND move to Incubator. Malafaya 01:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think all this disgusting votation could be avoided if mass-created bot stubs would be deleted, as happened in lombard wikipedia, but it should come as a personal initiative from the administradors in Volapük, after seeing how it is rarifying the whole Wikimedia community. Even Jimbo Wales has asked it not to appear on the List of Wikipedias classification. --Meldor 15:39, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. --Remulazz 08:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC) I don't want to see every bot article deleted. I just think that the ratio bot articles/total articles should be kept quite low, if possible much less than 1, and not, like vo.wiki and the former lmo.wiki, equal to 50, 100, 200, etc... --Remulazz 14:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC) No. I have just read what Warburg wrote below. Moving to incubator is too heavy, and I think that wo.wp doesn't deserve that. But I would like to point out that bots must be used cum grano salis, and not used to inflate the number of articles beyond the environmental limit. My vote is suspended. --Remulazz 14:40, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Reinhard 17:45, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --RR 00:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Thialfi 02:57, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Kawana 21:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support. efforts like that make more sense in other wiki-projects - even for bots! --ulli purwin 13:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Sailko 15:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
very strong support (if not close). -- Fruggo 23:17, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support Remove all articles which are only bot-generated --Lou Crazy 04:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I Support cleaning vo.wp up, since I agree that it current position is artificially inflated and is bad for the WP image. On the other hand, I strongly Oppose closing the project or moving it to the Incubator. Even if we delete all bot-generated articles, still the number of remaining articles considerably exceeds these on smaller wikipedias, the language is real (though artificial), and the community is interested in continuing editing the project. In addition to the arguments below that moving it to the incubator is technically impossible, I would like to add that with the current policy of opening new projects vo.wp will never have a chance of getting out of the incubator again. If the majority (not me) is against the existence of the project, it should be closed as ru-sib, not moved to the incubator. --Yaroslav Blanter 20:19, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
But couldn't it be that the 'bad effect' on wp image comes actually from believing the number-of-article parameters measures quality? It's like measuring the surface of a rectangle by the length of one of its sizes: it's clearly insufficient. Doesn't vo.wp rather show that number of articles is not a good measure of quality, and that it should be replaced by something else (see e.g. the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles)? After all, Wikipedia is not the Olympic Games. Why persist in using a flawed quality parameter when there are better ones available? --Smeira 22:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Because the "bad effect" is not on us, users with some experience and possibly administrators in some of the Wikipedia projects, but on media and on possible new users. Everybody gets to the list of wikipedias pages, finds vo on position 20 and says "What a junk this wikipedia is". Not on the level of Seigenthaler controversy, but still. And unless we want to launch a big-scale media campaign explaining that the number of articles is not the same as quality it is much better to downgrade vo.wp to its natural size.--Yaroslav Blanter 08:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have to disagree. Wanting to keep a bad parameter just because "the people is uneducated" is not a good reason, and it comes dangerously close to showing disrespect to the public. It's like supporting superstition just because many people happen to believe in it. Anybody who thinks number-of-articles measures quality is simply falling prey to a en:misuse of statistics (or even of mathematics -- as if s/he were thinking that the area of a rectangle can be found my measuring the length of one side), and if we support that, we're failing in our purpose ("repository of knowledge"). As for the media campaign, I don't see the need for it (at least yet); surely placing an explanation in the List of Wikipedias itself -- the place where the misunderstanding starts -- would be sufficient. (Note that I have seen good reactions from the press -- as I in the case I mentioned on Aphaia's talk page: the Dutch channel RTL-4 wants to interview me (for 30sec-1min) for a short thing on the Volapük Wikipedia, which praises WMF and the Wikipedia projects for its good effects on endangered languages.) Finally, note that the en:Seigenthaler controversy affected one of Wikipedia's most important features: its trustworthiness, its reliability. (Note also it happened on en.wp. If it had happened, say, on the Georgian Wikipedia, would it have received so much media attention?) The "vo.wp incident" wouldn't do that. All one can say is that it has an enormous number of small stubs: this in itself doesn't affect its reliability, the depth of coverage, or the trustworthiness of this or any other WMF project. --Smeira 09:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support move of project. Because it seems from the discussions here that it could us some more time to spent in the womb before it is allowed to start the journey to full independence.--Nived 90 03:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Do you appreciate that the requirements for approving the Volapuk Wikipedia were met at the time? The Volapuk localisation is being improved at the moment. When it has, it conforms to the requirements and the language committee would have to recommend for the project to go life. It would be a petty and useless excercise. GerardM 09:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Stongest Support Almost all pages are stubs, useless even. A Wikipedia should have the goal of giving information not raise its number of articles. And please don't oppose because Wikipedia English was also like the Volpuk years ago. As I have told you Wikipedia and its articles are to give information. And it doesn't mean that the English has done it, it is already most correct. I come from the Tagalog Wikipedia and such is happenning also to us, around 5,000 of our articles, or even more, are stubs. And I myself can say that they are entirely useless in giving information. -- Felipe Aira 11:28, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The argument against the proposal is not that it was like the English Wikipedia years ago, but that bot-created stubs aren't bad. They also help disseminate information, even if by little bits. If you don't like the information they give in Tagalog, OK. You can always add more. Note that there are people who expressed thanks that they could find a stub on vo.wp about their native towns; they would certainly disagree with you. --Smeira 11:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Smeira could you please stop commenting about just everything? Arnomane 13:07, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm commenting/reacting on arguments, which is what a discussion is. Nothing irrelevant in what I say. Could you perhaps do the same, Arnomane? --Smeira 14:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I am switching my vote after much consideration. I AGREE STRONGLY with either the suggestion of Jimbo Wales, below, or my own analysis at Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias: In essence, a steward should be assigned to trim back Volapuk's bot-mania. They are out of control. I've found literally hundreds of Volapuk articles which still have vast amounts of English text in them, due to bot-copying errors. -- Yekrats 08:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yekrats, you're ignoring the consistent corrections that are correcting these errors, which should sove them all in a couple of months. There are thousands of problematic stubs with all kinds of errors in all Wikipedias; these are dealt with by the community. Why are you ignoring this? Just check the statistics, on (Malafaya's user pages for example, or do you own searches; compare the results after a couple of weeks, for instance. As for me, I think I have a point, and I argue for it. Is that a sin? If you have counter-arguments, I'll be glad to listen. Who is "out of control" here? :-) --Smeira 09:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Wikimedia community has been more than patient. Yes, if you are anything like me, you have several "ordinary errors" in your Wikipedia: the odd grammar gaffe here and there, I'm sure. But in addition to those ordinary minor errors, and this point is particularly damning, you have articles in ANOTHER FRIGGIN' LANGUAGE! Not just one or two. HUNDREDS. And not just for a day or two; they been like that since mid-July. That is UNACCEPTABLE. -- Yekrats 13:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hadn't we had these 2 proposals of closing and cleaning up vo.wiki, those errors (~500 out of 100K articles) would have been history by now. Unfortunately, this argument of "months" tends to win based on the consecutive proposals that stall the people who work at vo.wiki. Basically we just spend our time argumenting here and there. :(. Malafaya 14:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, honestly, if we agree to delete those around 500 articles that contain the aforementioned mistakes, do you think this whole problem would be solved? Do you think all this is because of some 500 articles? Because, if it is, I think the problem can be solved really soon. Just I have the strong feeling that it (having 100% articles in Volapük) wouldn't solve a thing... Malafaya 15:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so, because the ~500 articles is a symptom of a greater problem. We keep talking about the symptoms, but the problem is SmeiraBot uploaded more articles than the community can deal with. Growth was too fast, and we must deal with the consequences. -- Yekrats 15:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, Yekrats! These articles are not the problem; they're being solved. Just consult the statistics! As for dealing with the articles: there are some answers to that in my comments to your proposal. I suggest we can deal with these articles, and that the fact that these ~500 errors are disappearing is evidence of this fact. Do you have evidence to the contrary? --Smeira 15:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't be so naive to suggest this bunch of English articles is the only problem you have there. These are just one example of the problems that I've uncovered with practically no effort. I've seen scores of other errors, too, but it seemed like accidentally writing articles in a foreign language -- and then leaving it like that for six months -- is one of the most egregious to me. You've got multiple pervasive problems throughout your entire Wiki. It stems from you relying too much on the bot beyond your ability to maintain the stubs in a timely manner. -- Yekrats 16:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Naive? I've named whole categories of errors here, and the strategies for dealing with them on this page, Yekrats. Look at my answer to Hillgentleman in the "Two Questions" section below. And I insist: there is no "writing" in a foreign language, just as you're not writing Indonesian when you misspel "the" as "teh"; there are "copying erros" that are being dealt with. As for time: Six months? In most cases, what was there six months ago was a simple 3-line stub with no errors; most of the copying errors are much more recent. Also note that we've been "distracted" for a whole month at least twice in the period... How many do you think there would be left by now otherwise? Maybe 200? Maybe 100? Maybe none?... What's 'reasonable reaction time' to you, Yekrats, and how do you measure it? --Smeira 17:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And how is that capacity of dealing with as much as X articles measured? I have to mention one of the biggest Wiktionaries that with 125K articles is one of the best there are. Yet, it's maintained by solely 2 active users. Aren't we led to say that it's beyond their "capacity" too? How can one objectively say some specific article count is beyond a community's capacity to "maintain" it? Malafaya 17:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also consider that error-correcting is a never-ending endeavor; hence the General disclaimer. Finding pages that contain errors -- and have contained them for quite a while -- is quite easy. Consider e.g. en:Roscoe, Illinois: the coordinates in the Infobox are not the same as the coordinates in the prose. Another example (found by Malafaya): en:Leopold, Indiana, in which a population of less than 100 is mentioned in the text, but 720 in the infobox. And this difference, in both cases, has existed since the infoboxes were created, nearly three months ago. There are hundreds of pages with similar inconsistencies; I found them all the time in the English Wikipedia when I was correcting the corresponding vo.wp pages. Consider also en:Steilacoom, Washington. I found it today, when checking the reason for copying errors in vo.wp. The second paragraph in the Demographics section had been wiped out by a vandal (IP number 24.22.239.233; check the history) more than two years ago (in Oct. 2005); despite the many human editors this page had since then, this action was only noticed and reverted... by me, today (here's the diff link). Besides showing the usefulness of my endeavors for en.wp -- I've reverted this kind of vandalism dozens of times in the last few months --, this shows that months, even years before errors are corrected is not to be found only in vo.wp; the English Wikipedia has them, too... Another example? Here's one from the Esperanto Wikipedia. Check eo:Amerika bizono, which I found as one of the first hits by simply looking for the English word "has" in eo.wp; it was hit number 14). Besides having a large English text (hidden by the comment markers <-- -->, presumably because the translator wants to continue translating the text into Esperanto; but where has he been since Sept 2006?), there is a template translation error that generates display errors in the first references: {{{atestantoj}}}{{{jaro}}}, {{{elŝutdato}}} are shown instead of the actual values. This happens because the template was translated, but in this particular article, the fields were kept in English: if one opens the article and looks at the infobox Taksonomio, one finds template IUCN2006 with fields "assessors=", "year=" and "downloaded=" still in English. (I note that, after I mentioned this fact, Yekrats went on and corrected the template: here is the diff link. Well done!) And this has been so since the beginning: September of 2006...
Now, what does this prove? That the English and Esperanto Wikipedias are too big for their small communities? :-) That texts in OTHER FRIGGIN' LANGUAGES and uncorrected templates are UNACCEPTABLE after over a year without corrections? NOOO... it proves that error-finding and correcting is a never-ending task, and that Wikipedias shouldn't be judged bad because there still are uncorrected errors -- there always are -- but by whether or not they are making consistent efforts to correct them, and how successful these efforts have been (what's the percentage of remaining errors? how has it been decreasing? etc...). --Smeira 16:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Smeira get your facts straight. A bot can fix certain formal errors very well but a bot can never create well articles. Thee are two totally diffeent things. But you will proceed writing cloudy words and you will proceed doing inapropriate comparisons with everything under the sun as long as you can protect your little own world where you are the ruler, regardless if it makes sense or not... Arnomane 11:13, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Arnomane, get your facts straight. A bot can fix certain formal errors very well and also create articles well, according to a template. The two are very similar things. But you will proceed making unsupported claims and not answering questions or commenting arguments and proposals with everything under the sun as long as you can protect your own belief system where you are James Bond, regardless of whether it is real or not... --Smeira 14:58, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As long as you proceed with your simply plain wrong claim that a bot can create articles well there is no way working with you but against you. Sad but true. Arnomane 15:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Arnomane, Interesting point. Please define "article" and explain the difference between "create" and "generate" or else explain how you are not blatantly contradicting yourself. :) Hillgentleman 19:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, Hillgentleman :-D... Arnomane: as long as you proceed with your simply plain wrong strategy of refusing to answer questions and present arguments, there is no way working with you but against you. Sad but true. --Smeira 19:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think, that bots should be used only for minor tasks, such as interwiki linking, fixing double redirects and others, but not creating an article (unless it's AI). And not only in VoWiki. In every Wikipedia, bots should not be allowed to create articles (in our Wikipedia, we've shut down article-creating bots). Abdullais4u 12:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support--Daniel73480 10:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Drop the garbage and focus on a few usefull articles. --TM 10:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
How do you define "garbage"? Notice that stubs are not bad (see e.g. good stub) and that all the data in them is found in other Wikipedias -- they're relevant and encyclopedic. Would you claim the same data are "garbage" in en.wp or de.wp? --Smeira 14:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thousends of machine generated texts, all the same with a few different numbers? Some people tend to call this "spam" (which is wrong, of course), I call it "garbage" in this case. The subjects of the articles may be relevant and encyclopedic (Viagra is relevant and encyclopedic, for example), but the articles are not (a billion Viagra mails is send each day, all the data in them is found in other mails). --TM 21:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is based on prejudice. Note: exactly the same data are found on en.wp, de.wp, etc., both in the text and in infoboxes, and there they are not called garbage. I don't see the relevance of the Viagra example: there's an article on it at en.wp: en:Viagra. Note also that the stubs at vo.wp are not all about the same place, unlike your example of billions of Viagra mails. Each stub is about a different place, as the different numbers show; for each article, the information (population, area, etc.) is found nowhere else on vo.wp except on that article; no "billions of pages with the same information" here. Note that "standard text" is not "same information". An ID card has standard text, but the information on each card is different, or else you could never tell Mr. Smith from Mr. Jones. There is no reason to call this information garbage; a standard text does not make it so. (I note that this has been discussed elsewhere on this page; see also GerardM's text: providing information when there's none, and also the opposing viewpoints of Yekrats and me on Meta:Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias). --Smeira 00:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I will not discuss something that was discussed a hundred times before on this page. If you are not able or willing to understand, that's your problem, not mine. --TM 11:12, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, suit yourself. You haven't read this page carefully then. Every time I raise these problems, supporters of this proposal just get angry and refuse to argue further. Frankly, I think it's you who's not willing to understand: I've presented logical arguments, and you didn't. It's not my fault. --Smeira 13:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Generating tenthousands of useless articles by bot can't be healthy for any Wikimedia project. -- J budissin 12:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Why? --Smeira 14:54, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Robotje 08:49, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Nina 17:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support for the deletion of bot-generated articles (but don't send to incubator) and the reboot of vo. as a real wiki (collaborative website, remember?) and a real encyclopedia. As it is, it's only a bot generated database, of questionable quality/content. Also paving the way for this to become a fashion, as (nearly) happened with lmo, and with others I see trying to hit a "highscore" the article "scoreboard". The "list per number of articles" is there because thousands of people put thousands of workhours into making millions of articles-it is a reflection of this reality, and it's not right to take advantage of it, or discredit it entirely as a bluff. Smeira's intentions apart, mass-creation of thousands of articles takes the life away from a wiki and, unless there is a 'strong' community or serious planning from the start, lots of hair will be pulled in despair when the time comes to turn the "content" into content. Delete the bot-articles, and start from scratch (that's how we all started). - Badseed 05:11, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Badseed. A "collaborative website" needs a community, which is what we are now beginning to have (I hope): instead of taking the life away from this wiki, mass-creation of articles has brought life to it. Just check the recent changes, or the new articles. "Database" in this case means information that was never available in this language before -- a leap forward. It's arrogant from people of bigger language communities, with thousands of works of reference in their language and a large number of dedicated Wikipedians, to decide what information smaller-community Wikipedians can or cannot have. Quality and content are comparable to that of other Wikipedias: the information is found in them, and has the same level of quality. (I note that, in the process of correcting bot errors in vo.wp, many cases of vandalism -- often unreverted for months, even years -- were reverted in other Wikipedias: i.e., other Wikipedias are benefitting from us.) It would seem that the ones who care about "highschores" are exactly those who support this proposal: they want their "highscores" back. The "List of wikipedias by number of articles" masks a lot of good work: the Hebrew Wikipedia, for instance, is better (has more creative work) than the Romanian Wikipedia; the Russian Wikipedia also seems to be better than the Polish Wikipedia (check the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles). Lots of workhours go unnoticed because of that. Both facts are masked by the List of Wikipedias, where a stub counts the same as a featured article. It would indeed be better to classify Wikipedias by number of featured articles (why don't we do that? it would give everybody back their "highscores", and it would allow vo.wp to keep its information content). Number-of-articles is a flawed parameter that hides work rather than showing it. You all started this way -- which doesn't mean it's the only way, especially not for small-community wikis, which by their very nature have different goals. --Smeira 15:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose request

Oppose Nonsense. The articles of Volapük are different from those on lombard. Volapük's articles are not messy and contain useful information. I have used and am still using Volapük's articles to get information about villages, towns and cities all over the world. So I'm opposing this. --OosWesThoesBes 10:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have to question this... You seem to have excellent command of English, at the very least; why would you rely on bot-generated stubs when much higher-quality information is available elsewhere? -- Visviva 10:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note that much of the original information in the English Wikipedia was also bot-generated; so if he wanted to transfer manually this information by translating the equivalent English articles/stubs, he would (a) be translating bot-created text, and (b) getting the same result a bot would give: pages with standard text and changing numbers. --Smeira 04:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose hard on the heels on a denied proposal for closing the project and without a practical project proposal, I think it is in bad taste. GerardM 11:13, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It's hard to see my daily contribution/cleanup of the Volapük Wikipedia neglected by those who state there is only one contributor: Smeira. This Wikipedia has fought to increase its quality in the past month. The depth indicator has raised 2 points in that period already. The comparison with the Lombard Wikipedia is not valid because AFAIK the main reason for deletion of articles in that wiki relates to the supposed invented dialect of Lombard used by the previous admin and not because they were bot-generated (a bot's a problem? If I copy/paste 100,000 articles contents, is it ok then?). I strongly oppose this request. Malafaya 11:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You don't get the point:
1. Copy & pasting would be evil as well. In contrast it would be very cool if you'd translate 100'000 articles to Volapük by yourself. Arnomane 11:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  I don't see why. If I had done those articles by translating them manually -- they're so easy that the work, although certainly harder without bots, would not be beyond the reach of a number of human contributors -- they would all still be short, 5-sentence stubs. In what way would this have made them any better? A point to ponder: articles should be judged by their quality, not by whether or not they are bot-created. --Smeira 12:04, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
That's exactly the point. Volapuk Wiki is full of small, useless, repetitive five sentence stubs. It is OK when there are a few, to be improved later on. It is useless when there are so many. You're right that the point is not that they are bot-generated. The point is that they are better removed. I call tehem "bot generated" so that anyone will understand what we're talking about. If they had been generated by a human, then they'd have to be removed too! --Lou Crazy 04:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not really. Look up good stub: five-stence stubs are not "useless", they are "useful" (a useless stub is one from which you can derive no relevant information). They could be better, but they could also be worse. There are lots of five-sentence stubs everywhere (one example among thousands: de:Streator); they do not harm that I can see. How can many of them do any harm? They're simply sources of information. --Smeira 09:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
1. The Lombard Wikipedia had this bot article problem among others. Arnomane 11:48, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  I did get the point: you just can't count how many copy/paste actions have been made in any Wikipedia. Therefore you just act on those where you can see bots, which on their own are not evil (or else let's just ban bots altogether). After talking to the current Lombard sysop some time ago, he explained that the article deletion is just related to the invented language. It's less costly to rewrite them. Malafaya 11:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Another point: in suggesting that bot articles be removed, you're bypassing the opinion of the people involved: those who contribute to vo.wp. Please consider discussing your proposal and your arguments there beforehand! --Smeira 12:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose All reasons mentioned in the proposal have been discussed and answered in the previous proposal for closing vo.wp. If the proposer wants admin rights, s/he should request them at vo.wp (e.g. at vo:Vükiped:Kafetar, and s/he should discuss his/her intentions for vo.wp with the other contributors. Otherwise this is the wiki equivalent of a coup d'état. --Smeira 12:08, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeThis isn't going to work, instead of making you admin or anything else, you should expand those bot articles. 82.174.63.90 12:58, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
(= me Kameraad Pjotr 12:59, 26 December 2007 (UTC))[reply]
Oppose. My home wiki is a smallish Wikipedia with a much larger neighbour Wikipedia. Many of the articles on nn.wikipedia are much smaller, more stubbish, than those on no.wikipedia, and there is a lot more users on no.wikipedia than there is on nn.wikipedia. Close to everyone that can read nn.wikipedia can read no.wikipedia too. Needless to say some people feel nn.wikipedia are just a waste of time and space. If Arnomane can get to be sysop on vo.wikipedia through this process, anyone/any mob can get to erase small wikis, and override the local small communities. That will make it impossible for me to continue using, and working on, Wikimedia projects. --Jorunn 16:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure the Nynorsk Wikipedia has more non-stub articles than Volapuk. Still, if Volapuk is allowed to keep operating as they are doing now, then the image of other small wikis will suffer too. Would you like being thought of as a content-free wikipedia? I'm sure you're not, but if you join your fate with Volapuk Wikipedia then that's the image you're getting. --Lou Crazy 04:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for starters, good stubs are not "content-free", and Wikipedia has many hundreds of thousands of them over all projects -- just check how many stub categories any of the major Wikipedias has. They're useful and they add content. The problem is deriving conclusions about the quality of articles in a Wikipedia project from the sheer number of articles; anybody doing that is simply misinterpreting statistics. It would be like mistakenly deducing that all articles in en.wp are like the featured article mentioned on the main page just because this article is very visible there; in fact, 99% of them are worse (which means nothing bad -- it's just that FA level is very high, a fact which a casual visitor might not realize). We should offer them better measures with which to judge what to expect from a given project, not insisting on using a flawed measure. (By the way, have you checked what the activity of vo.wp has been over the last two months, before saying things about it "keep[ing] operating as they are doing now?") --Smeira 09:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On image: I've gotten many positive reactions to vo.wp from outsiders. Are you sure that the "bad image" you talk about is something other than Wikipedians with a different philosophy? To the general public, I think the "anyone can edit" part of Wikipedia raises much stronger concerns ('can I trust what I see there?') than the "there are many stubs". To the normal, non-Wikipedian reader of Wikipedia, finding correct information is much more important than how articles were written or how long and detailed they are. --Smeira 09:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Balko 18:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC) - This request is far from fair and balanced. The Volapük wiki does no harm.[reply]
Strong oppose The small Volapuk Wikipedia community is the only one that have permission to judge about your own content. This isn't a Wikimedia issue. This proposal is a pure nonsense. 555 21:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well would you mind loosing the Volapük Interwiki? Would you mind being ignored and silenced by every other Wikipedia? I hope not and I do hope you now get the point that sometimes you have to listen to the others or you risk loosing all sovereignty over your wiki. Arnomane 22:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The result on Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Volapük Wikipedia was keep, no vo.wikipedia is a bastard due to theirs bot-generated articles. You are misunderstanding a request to close with a request to get ride of bot generated articles. Bot generated articles on vo.wp are exactly the same thing as a bot generated articles everywhere. If you have troubles with these, you may have with all, so... Why not requesting to deleted all bot generated articles from all wikis?

I don't have nightmares with a bot uploading text on a wiki. This don't generates any troubles with me. Simply it. 555 23:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Arnomane: I don't think vo.wp is risking being "ignored and silenced by every other Wikipedia". There were many messages in support of vo.wp from other Wikipedias. Look at fr.wp: there are many more stubs on French communes in vo.wp than on German Gemeinde, still I only had support and good ideas from fr.wp people. Aren't you confusing your own private opinion with "every other Wikipedia"'s? -- Smeira 01:47, 28 dec 2007.
Strongly opposed to this proposal. Hégésippe | ±Θ± 00:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC) + Commentaires en français : les admins de MetaWiki devraient donner un avertissement sérieux à ceux qui, n'étant pas parvenus à obtenir la fermeture du wiki en volapük, cherchent un nouvel angle d'attaque, particulièrement sournois, et tout aussi injustifié (et injustifiable). Hégésippe | ±Θ± 00:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could anyone translate this please? Chaddy 04:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, Chaddy! Here it goes: (Hégésippe, s'il te plaît, vérifie ma traduction; on ne sait jamais...)
The admins at MetaWiki should really give a serious warning to those who, not having been able to obtain the closure of the Volapük wiki, now try a new "attack angle" -- a particularly sneaky one, and equally unjustified.
--Smeira 00:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Chaddy 23:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly opposed. It's paranoya. Let be Volapuk Wikipedia. Project Wikipedia isn't Olympic Games. No problems for number of articles. --Pauk 05:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note: this opinion was added after this request to come and vote here; same with the opinion below ∴ Alex Smotrov 06:05, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note: asking people who care about the issue to vote is normal practice. In real-world elections, we all get reminded by mail and on TV of how important it is to vote and participate in the decision process. --Smeira 22:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane has also invited his friends from de.wikipedia 555 01:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And I have also invited people from fr, it and es to come and vote for the choice they deem most appropiate] Leptictidium 13:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly opposed. Generated articles we can find in different wikis. Why we should delete all of them only from Volapük wiki? Only the Community of the vo.wp can make a desision to delete or to keep their articles. ОйЛ (OiL) 05:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Let the Volapük Wikipedia be what it is: A beautiful project in a beautiful language! --HannesM 07:02, 27 December 2007
Extremely strongly oppose. What is it with the Germans and their we want to delete everything mentality anyway? Waerth 10:00, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody learn a langauage by a database. A language is learning by writing, spoking and reading. Volapük-Wikipedia is a sinless rpoject, written by a brainless bot. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Liesel (talk) 10:33, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad you think Volapük is sinless (have you looked up the meaning of this word? sinless = sündenfrei, sündenlos :-)... But seriously now, you're talking as if this were a closure proposal again (which, as MF-Warburg and Slomox demonstrate below, it probably is...) And who is saying anything about learning a language? Why is this important? (Short "database-like" texts are, by the way, wonderful for beginners. If you ever want to learn, say, Albanian, I recommend trying to read the stubs at sh.wp first; the featured articles are too difficult. I know what I'm saying, I've been trying to study Albanian for a few months now.) --Smeira 22:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Closing didnt make it, now you attack this wikipedia this way? Just leave this wiki alone. Multichill 12:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the general nature of this request. The Volapük-Wikipedia needs to work things out for themselves. Can't everyone see that imposing deletions against community consensus is going to destroy this community? How are they supposed to develop policies, procedures, etc. when people are stepping in declaring their decisions wrong and overturning them? This is overall a very bad proposal for addressing a community that is doing something outsiders don't like. Do we need to start making a list of all the local policies that need to be "corrected"?--BirgitteSB 15:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
vo-WP doesn´t have a community. Or are a handful users and some bots newly a community? Chaddy 16:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it does; check the meaning of en:Community: a group of organisms (e.g. people) sharing a space and common interests, beliefs, etc -- no upper or lower limits on number. You're even trying to become a member of it yourself, or else I don't understand your request to have your account there de-blocked. Why don't you propose your policies there? (see vo:Vükiped:Kafetar for such requests). Notice also that you're straying from the discussion: you're discussing the viability of Volapük as a language for an encyclopedia, not the number of stubs, which supposedly is the rationale for this proposal. --Smeira 17:14, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Chaddy, as you can easily verify, there are lots of Wikipedias that have 1 or 2 users (in some, hardly none) and yet nobody is trying to shut them down for "not being a community". Malafaya 17:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
@Chaddy: If there is no community then it should be closed entirely. If there is enough of a community to prevent closure then that community needs to work it out. I can't believe that people wish to spend their time policing wikis they do not belong to for bot-generated articles. Seriously, I would understand if you were cracking down on copyright violations or non-neutral articles or improper restrictions on editing. I would still oppose the exact nature of this proposal, but I would be much more sympathetic. It is almost laughable (if it wasn't so serious) that so many people wish to cross the line of wiki-automony over bot-generated articles. --BirgitteSB 20:22, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I would be opposed to such a draconian measure against VO, unless it applied fairly to all Wikipedias. Take for instance, the Polish wikipedia with 450000 articles and a pathetic depth of 7. Would you suggest that we insert a non-Polish admin into the the Polish Wikipedia to delete soulless robot garbage, or to put it in the incubator? Crazy! That being said, I think the Volapukists should establish some guidelines about "what is an article" and try to stick to it. For example, at the Esperanto wikipedia, we say an article must have at least three complete sentences and one internal link. That way, if someone points out a subminimum article (like vo:Mäzul, vo:1 Decembrie, etc.) it can either be improved or deleted. Also, there should be notability standards: Not every human on the planet deserves a wiki article, and nor does every village of 50 people. Creation by robot shouldn't matter as much as general quality and notability. It should be fairly obvious when something is below the minimum standard. Volapukists, please establish minimum standards for quality (length) and notability!!!! -- Yekrats 18:16, 27 December 2007 (UTC) Because Smeira stubbornly refuses to see reason, attacks everyone with a different viewpoint and refuses any sort of measure to reel in his own bot, I am now leaning to support this measure. Smeira, stop disrupting Wikimedia to make a point and stop gaming the system. -- Yekrats 08:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's curious you mention Polish Wiki too. I was deemed off-topic for mentioning it before. Yekrats, thanks for the suggestion. Actually we were working on that (standardizing & improving articles) when suddenly we had to put our efforts on this discussion rather than working on those articles. Malafaya 18:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quote of myself: I think this is a fair and balanced request, which should be adapted to similar cases in future if it works out. This was written with other Wikipedias in mind (and I did think about ploish) but you cnnot honestly demand to do everything at once. This has nothing to do with injustice, just with limited ressources and working carefully (in order to minimize failures during the procedure). So plish wikipedia is off-topic now. Arnomane 18:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
First: "Fair and balanced" is probably not the phrase you want to use, because en:Fox News Channel often uses it, and they are known for neither being fair nor balanced. ;-) That aside, are we focusing on the problems of Wikipedias in general, or specifically picking on Volapuk? It seems like you are doing an end-run around the deletion vote, trying to move it to the incubator and force deletions from outside. Personally, I would like to see them delete a lot of garbage there. I made that pretty clear during the vote for deletion. I think many of those robot articles are an embarrassing blight, and probably should be deleted. And probably the Volapuk community should be more proactive to deleting that kind of junk. Furthermore, the Volapuk community should be less quick to judge requests for deletion -- like Chaddy's above, who proposed articles for deletion, but the Volapukists saw such a request as vandalism. Clearly Chaddy pointing out the substandard nature of the articles spurred Smeira to fix it, even if neither party was very friendly about it. -- Yekrats 20:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As Malafaya mentions, we're trying to do that, Yekrats. Even though nobody at vo.wp still staid anything against these articles, I think it's a good idea to foster discussion; so I have right now started a discussion heading on bot articles at vo.wp (see vo:Vükiped:Kafetar#Geb elas bots ad jafön yegedis nulik). Now, Yekrats, I of course respect your right to decide for yourself what is "garbage" or "junk" and what is not; but in the absence of clear guidelines, please respect other people's right to think differently. The Germans, for instance, if I remember well their guidelines, say that any inhabited settlement is sufficiently notable. As for the Chaddy case: I fully agree. It's better to ignore provocations and assume good intentions. The amount of aggressive vandalism we had to deal with made me forget that. --Smeira 23:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, nobody is saying you should have done the Polish wikipedia first (though it has more bot-created articles than vo.wp, and would probably set a much stronger precendent; but you decide what you do). But there are two points you're missing: (a) this proposal should be discussed within vo.wp first, and here only if this fails; you haven't even tried to do that, you jumped ahead and landed here first; (b) despite basing the proposal on other "problems" (which have other solutions that you don't want to discuss), you have already admitted (down below in one of the comments section) that the real problem is: you don't like many bot-created stubs. You haven't said why, you just keep repeating words like "crap" or "should never be done" -- as if everybody agreed with you. Obviously many people don't. And people from other small projects may well be afraid that you or others like you will go on to impose your view on what's an article/stub and what's not an article/stub to their wikis. Before you do that, you should initiate a broader discussion on when small articles or stubs should be immediately deleted. If there is no cross-wiki consensus, you're just imposing your opinions. I don't agree with you, and I'm not necessarily wrong. If the problem is larger, then you shouldn't start by attacking vo.wp; you should start by saying what criteria you use and why they are better than other people's criteria. (Why is vo:Febul bad but de:O'Fallon (Illinois) good? Why isn't Chaddy tagging de:O'Fallon (Illinois) for deletion?) Am I making this point clear, or am I being "cloudy" and using "long words" again? --Smeira 23:08, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When I tagged vo:Febul, this page had been almost empty. There were only links to the other articles abouts months and a calendar. But there was no text. You can´t affirm that an empty page with no content is an article.Chaddy 23:35, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But I don't affirm that. What I do affirm is: you didn't ask anybody at vo.wp what the right procedure is for dealing with such cases. There is a category (vo:Klad:Pads koräkabik = pages to correct) where such pages should be included for further improvement. You didn't know that, and you didn't ask. (If you looked at the history page, you'll have seen that the page was created long before I came to vo.wp, and by a human; I hadn't really seen it before. I hope you're not blaming me for it.) Note that I added some text, and placed it (or rather the entire vo:Klad:Muls, to which it belongs) in the vo:Klad:Yegeds no pefipenöls: articles to improve/complete. Please look around and ask for advice before doing something like requesting deletion in a wiki you have no previous experience with. This is what I was asked to do every time I opened an account in a new wiki. --Smeira 00:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. I just wanted to suggest it. Polish Wikipedia certainly needs cleanup and I think I can afford that task. I am going to file the same request for Polish Wikipedia.--Certh 01:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead, let's see what happens. Maybe someone will ask for the closure of the Dutch Wikipedia too, since they have tens of thousands of bot-created city stubs (e.g.: nl:Buchères). Hmm... you'll probably be opposed by the same people who opposed the first vo.wp closure proposal and this second one (per Slomox, this proposal is equivalent to a second closure proposal). Are you sure you wouldn't want to start a discussion about bot-generated stubs and whether or not they are evil first? Meta is a good place for that too. (Also, it seems you don't have a userpage at Meta yet -- I think you have to have one, with a link to your home wiki, in order to participate or to propose closures or "radical cleanups"). --Smeira 11:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You cannot excuse your own mistakes with the mistakes of others. You cannot say: "Cause others did write 30% of their Wikipedia with a bot I have the right to write 100% of my Wikipedia with a bot". At some point there is the last straw and this here definitely is. Arnomane 11:49, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Arnomane, I am not excusing my "mistakes" with the "mistakes" of others. I am saying that I don't think this is a mistake -- at least not as bad as you think it is. You say writing many bot-created articles (say, 95% of the titles) is bad; but you don't say why. Once more, I challenge this idea. By doing this, I managed (a) to find new contributors (the community has grown from one to about five, and new users keep coming), (b) to openly demonstrate that article count is not a good measure for quality (see the discussion of the first closure proposal), and (c) to get a lot of -- true, correct, and relevant --information into Volapük that had never been available in this language before. Of course I agree that if these articles were improved by people, they would become much better. I have improved many of them, and other people are now doing this too. Yet I don't think even the "unimproved" ones are per se so bad as to justify your anger. You say this is the "last straw" (I suppose you mean "where you draw the line"; note that "last straw" has more to do with anger than with good reasons); can you explain why? Look: the articles that are your "last straw" satisfy the definition of a useful stub -- check it! And if these stubs are useful, why many of them (yes, even 95% of the titles) are so bad? The absolute number of stubs is not so high: there are more bot-created stubs outside of vo.wp than in vo.wp. And above all: why not discuss this within vo.wp first? Why violate wiki-autonomy over this, when (as BirgitteSB said) there are much more important problems to solve first? If you have a problem with stubs, then, before attacking the work of those who don't agree with you, please demonstrate that it is really bad. This can be done by starting a general discussion and inviting comments from all Wikipedias with bot-created articles. --Smeira 13:08, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note: If this request was less draconian, I might support it. For example, if the request forced VO to delete SmeiraBot's additions with less than X number of bytes (250?), or add more useful content. I think many of the articles there now are not only un-useful, they are an embarrassment to Wikipedia in general; furthermore they put a vitriolic eye of scrutiny on planned languages. I am an admin at the Esperanto-wiki, where we are working very hard to make a high-quality and respectable wiki. Whenever these propositions about the Volapuk wiki come up, I wince. I know that inevitably people will question whether Wikis are justified in planned languages, and they use the poor quality and large number of articles at VO:WP (perhaps unfairly or unwisely) as the justification for that. So, although I am once again pensively supporting VO:WP, at the same time I am not condoning the large bot-loading of articles to advertise, and urging the VO:WP to clean up its own act. I'd like it to be done in-house (in VO:WP) and I'd like for it to be done more quickly than Smeira's 2-year proposal. If you do not, I fear we will be fighting this battle over and over again. -- Yekrats 18:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yekrats, that would be a good suggestion, but I checked articles smaller than 250 bytes and, based on the Shortpages special page, I estimate around 6000 articles, and many of them seem to be disambiguation pages (not even fair to delete these). It wouldn't make a noticeable difference in the project nor it would fit I think the goals of the supporters of this voting. Believe me: it's not that easy to find a bot-generated stub in Volapük Wikipedia that you can delete on that criteria. And deleting articles with less than 2000 bytes is already asking too much, isn't it? Many articles in these conditions exist throughout Wikimedia projects and nobody is acting on them with speedy-deletions. Malafaya 18:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The number 250 wasn't any fixed idea. I was just picking a number out of the air; naturally you wouldn't want to delete disambiguation pages nor the framework of Wikipedia. To be more specific, I'm talking about the 1 or 2 sentence articles which are all created by robot with very little content. I have deleted uncountable many of that kind of article out the Esperanto Wikipedia for exactly those reasons -- too small, too stumpy; extremely small stumps are (arguably) unhelpful. Generally, we feel someone should improve an article or delete it, and we give time for someone to improve it first. I'm talking about the thousands of articles that are two sentences: "Xxxxx is a city in Yyyyyy. It has Zzzzzz people living there." I wouldn't recommend speedy deletion on anything but patent nonsense or vandalism. On an unrelated note, I don't see why you were linking to the Esperanto Wikipedia in the paragraph above. Here I am: I try to support the VO:WP, against my better judgment, and yet I think you are moking me and my Wikipedia, which has thousands more useful articles than VO. Yet, there are still many of that kind of article still at EO:WP, so my crusade against useless crap continues. Maybe you were trying to make a point, but made it in a rude way. I'm not sure. However, you are making me reconsider my "oppose" vote. }:-( -- Yekrats 21:19, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yekrats, not at all. I'm sorry if it looked like mocking: I just wanted to give examples you would feel comfortable evaluating, sincerely, so I picked them from your own Wiki like I could have picked in any other. I think those articles are perfectly fine as they are, no second intentions implied. I'm too a contributor of Vikipedio and would never mock of it. Sorry for the ambiguous linking. Malafaya 22:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Another farce from wikipedians with too long of a nose to comfortably stick to their own projects. Vükiped has so many bad articless ― who cares!!! It's their language and their project, let them be the ones ashamed for the alleged lack of quality. I wonder why such suggestions keep coming from de wikipedians, is there some hidden profanity in volapuk the non-german speakers don't get?! That said, I do think meta users who don't have direct links to their user pages in their home projects should be banned from meta, especially if they are jumping over their heads to bring radical changes to other projects. ― Teak 18:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do care I care about the Volapük interwiki link crap flooding our other Wikipedias and the bad reputation we other Wikipedias get from this dirty kid. Arnomane 18:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Would you please, please provide at least one link to some page in which it can be seen that interwiki links to stubs are "crap" (most interwiki links to stubs are not to vo.wp) -- who ever said that? And why? Or to a page in which this "bad reputation" is documented -- other than you people's talk pages? Don't you think your words, your behavior and your obvious anger are more "crappy" and typical of a "dirty kid" than anything in vo.wp? Arnomane, your proposal was so well written, so carefully worded... why can't you go on speaking like that? --Smeira 22:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Because:
Inmediatly after my initial request (I did think quite a while about it and did read al lot of older discussions beforehand) you started to occupy this proposal with a huge flood of your comments in lenghty redundant words (you obviously just wanted to have the most words).

You never ever acknowledged any problems from your side, you just hide yourself behind your general comments on minorities on your souvereignty and so on.

Supporters of you do the same and do mass comments (isn't it strange that others do say I want the last word in every comment but do exactly that themselves in contrast to me?) in order to make a kind of denial of service to this very proposal.

This sum makes me just sad and thus I have doubts on your honest intentions. Arnomane 00:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Arnomane, if the "supporters" is me, it's not a coincidence that I have the "last word" if you make me a direct question. Play fair and not with words. Malafaya 00:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Arnomane,
The space I "occupy" is free for discussion; anyone can use it. I explain my points, I give arguments, I provide links, I express ideas, I ask questions. How exactly is this bad? Everything I wrote is relevant to the "problems" you mentioned in the proposal. Can you show anything I wrote that is not relevant? The space for voting is clear and free; have my explanations made voting here any more difficult? Has anyone felt threatened by me? Have I attacked without arguments, have I provided wrong information, have I used impolite words? You, on the other hand, have used impolite words ("crap"), have put words into other people's mouth ("you Volapük people ask for more time" when nobody here asked for more time so far), have made claims without a clear basis ("you'll loose the Volapük interwiki" -- to de.wp maybe, if you have consensus there; but elsewhere? why? what's your basis for saying this?), and you fail to answer direct questions (like: why are bot stubs worse than human stubs? how can you solve the technical problems with the incubator that Warburg mentions? why are interwiki links to stubs bad? etc. etc. etc.)

If there is a problem in discussion here, I still don't see it. As Pauk said, Wikipedia is no Olympic Games: article number doesn't matter for quality. I keep asking you why you think bot-created articles are bad, and why interwiki links to stubs are bad, and you simply don't answer, you just keep repeating "yes it is, it is, it is"! This is not my fault.

I explained everything I said. I had many arguments, so I needed to expand them. And you keep not answering, so I have to repeat them again and again. How exaclty explaining my opinion makes the discussion worse? The space for voting is clear and free; my clear expositions of my points are not jeopardizing that in any way. I don't know about you wanting the last word; what I see is: you keep not answering.

I don't think you have a reason for getting so angry, Arnomane. I'm not trying to attack you; I'm merely trying to get you to defend your ideas. I don't agree with them (and I'm not the only one, as you can see in the "Oppose" section), and the "huge flow of words" says why. Read it, don't be afraid. Then, please, answer. It's much better than getting angry. --Smeira 01:53, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose Since when is Wikipedia about deleting information? BoH 19:31, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as proposal is nonsense. Generated articles are more then valid (please, add sources in all articles!). I may see that one or combination of the next may be the reasons for demanding such nonsense action: (1) someone is afraid with so much articles, (2) someone doesn't like to see that a small community is able to make the same number of articles as big ones, (3) someone is preparing field for removing all bot-generated articles and forbidding such actions. In all cases, please go firstly to the English, French, Italian and Polish Wikipedias. --Millosh 20:40, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Millosh! Thanks for your comment. Perhaps you'd like to join the Association Of Those Who Think Bot-Created Stubs Are An Acceptable Way To Add Information To A Wikipedia? Since the 'support' people apparently aren't going to do it, we probably should think about a way to start a general discussion on bot-created stubs at a higher level. --Smeira 10:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose And I do find statements like crap, dirty kid,... quite disconcerting and strongly resent such insults! --Manie 22:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Sopho 00:17, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I Oppose this nonsense. ----Anonymous Dissident^Talk 00:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose this proposal even if I can understand the problem for Wikimedia to show as a big project a site mainly created by bots. I'm sure we can found a better solution than delete any article. Aoineko 02:36, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as proposal is nonsense. See further above. Sonuwe 02:43, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose this is a threat. Where to stop? This is a communities decision and nobodys else. + Per Birgitte SB on foundation-I. --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 12:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
changed to Oppose - It seems more likely that a better solution can be found without actually deleting everything..and Insults and threats is not the way to do it !!!..--Comet styles 12:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Bot-created articles on towns are great and should be created in every Wikipedia for all towns in the world - why do manually what you can do automatically? Ausir 13:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly my point (but I like more the idea of central database accessible to every project, something like Commons). I wonder why all the supporters of this proposal fail to see that? (And why they miss the fact that the vo.wp community is the one to decide what to do with their project)... --Smeira 13:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Contra - again. --MF-Warburg 14:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 91.77.182.144 15:15, 28 December 2007 (UTC). Dr. Fatman[reply]
Oppose I would propose to make the interwiki botmasters not link to vo.wp any more since vo articles do not meet the quality standard most other projects underlie, but the quality of their articles itself is not our matter, it's a community decision. (Nevertheless, I don't like bot generated stuff at all, but in smaller languages it's better to have such stuff than nothing.) --Thogo (talk) 17:50, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- "Quality standard" which doesn't deal with NPOV and references is a cultural bias. Imposing one cultural bias may lead to imposing other... --Millosh 18:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree to this at all. --Thogo (talk) 18:43, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't see anything in the reasons for this proposal that wasn't countered in the vote for closure. The interwiki disruption has already happened - surely as much disruption would be cause by suddenly removing all those interwiki links again! I can't understand the logic here. The other arguments are general arguments that should apply to all Wikipedias - if stubs are bad, remove them from all WPs. If bot edits are bad, remove them from all WPs. If WPs for languages with few speakers are bad, close all WPs for languages with few speakers. If WPs with small (but active) communities are bad, close all WPs with small (but active) communities. If edit count is a bad measure of size then use something better! Also, Lombard does not set a precedent here - the situation was quite different (as has already been covered on this page). --HappyDog 19:52, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi HappyDog! Perhaps you'd care to join the Association Of Those Who Think Bot-Created Stubs Are An Acceptable Way To Add Information To A Wikipedia? Since the 'support' people apparently aren't going to do it, we probably should think about a way to start a general discussion on bot-created stubs at a higher level. --Smeira 10:38, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose nonsense Mateus Hidalgo 20:24, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose - silly meddling, and terrible insults. I recently "translated" vo:Kosmopolan to en:Kosmopolan so there is definitely some useful pages being created on this sub-domain that do not exist on any other sub-domain. Its worth noting that oldwikisource:Category:Volapük is also very healthy.
If interwiki links are the problem, simply request that iw links are not created to bot generated vo pages until they have been reviewed by a human. John Vandenberg 12:57, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Robert, a contributer to the Volapük wiki, and proud of it!— The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.203.125.239 (talk) 555 14:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Glidis, o Robert! Ad givön vögodi olik is, mutol i labön kali su Meta; jafolös, begö! bali. (Su kal at, pladolös i yümi ad pad olik su Vükiped cifik ola -- Vükiped Volapükik cedü ob -- dat valans ökanons sevön, das ya äbinol geban Vükipeda bü mob at, e das labol gitäti ad vögodön. Danö! --Smeira 03:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC) Hi Robert! To vote here, you need to have a Meta account; please create one. (On this account, please put also a link to your home page on your main Wikipedia -- the Volapük one I think -- so that everybody can see that you were a Wikipedia user before this proposal and that you have the right to vote. Thanks![reply]
Here's my user page for the meta wiki [[3]] which contains a link to my user page at Vüki. Does this count as a vote?Robertvp 16:31, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeChabi 10:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose because project makas impossible that language extinct. --Mihael Simonic 21:22, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Pali Wikipedia (an extinct language with zero native speakers[4]) is also comprised mainly from bot-generated stubs generated by a user who cannot speak that language at all. Unless all the stub content from Pali Wikipedia are also deleted, I cannot support this current proposal cleanup of Volapük Wikipedia. --Jose77 09:04, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Osias 03:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This vote shouldn't count. It's an anonymous user whose only contribution on meta is this vote. -- Leptictidium 03:21, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
True. Anonymous user, please login and sign your vote. Thanks, Malafaya 03:23, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Stay away from vo.wp! -Markvondeegel 16:15, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That´s the best argument I have ever heard... By the way, what do you mean? Should nobody contribute to vo-WP or what? Chaddy 17:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
My guess, Chaddy, is that he (the name is Mark, right?) is saying: don't try to destroy other people's work -- at least not without talking to these people in their own wiki first and explaining your reasons to them. I may be wrong, of course, but that's how I understand it. I don't think he wants to drive contributors away from vo.wp. (We could go ask him on his home wiki if you want.) --Smeira 11:51, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I oppose this proposal, being invalid, since it goes against established practices and even the foundation issues. Arnomane, if you want the sysop flag, go request it properly at the proper place. - Hillgentleman 17:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose To stop massive article creation by bots, system-wide guidelines to limit it should be developed. I would support such guidelines applied to all wikipedias, but I oppose haphazard limitations applied to certain "unpopular" wikipedias. --Jmb 21:07, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, Jmb. In fact, everybody: I really would like to start a discussion on bot-created stubs, and the goals of small-language Wikipedias, independently of particular projects. This looks to me like a question of policy that should be settled at a higher level. Does anyone know how that could be started? --Smeira 11:54, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
ENOUGH! Previously I voted in favour but this time I Oppose. A simple reason: don't let the Volapük Wikipedia be the place to throw your misery of 2007 in! What about the projects in our dialects. They should not exist! Volapük is a real language because it differs so much. Well, too little speakers? No problem! Just use a bot! JHaeneberghen 09:15, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi JHaeneberghen, thanks for your vote (though I admit I disagree on the dialect question...)! You need to create an account at Meta before your vote can be considered valid (with a link to your user page in your main wiki for confirmation). --Smeira 12:08, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I agree that automated mass generation of stubs is undesirable for several of the reasons listed; if I want bare statistics I can consult the English Wikipedia. I'd like to see this error reversed and the Volapük Wikipedia brought back to its true proportions. But moving it to the Incubator would be without merit, as it stands no more chance of growing a community there than it does as a fully-fledged Wikipedia. And if a single person can't be NPOV (as the proposal alleges), then any number of people cannot be, either. The proposal overreaches. Ni'jluuseger 04:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I cannot see any valid reason why we should have no volapük wikipedia or destroy valuable work of other people. Yes, lot of articles were generated by a bot. But those little articles are factual and correct. They exist in other languages and most of them were generated by bots in those languages as well. So what ? I believe the only reason of both proposals (previous closure proposal and this one) is the fact that volapük wikipedia appears high-ranked in the statistics. Solution shouldn’t be the annihilation of volapük wiki but to reconsider the statistics:
- or you accept not to care about those statistics
- or you propose that statistics script doesn’t take in account stubs or bot-generated articles (which should be the fairest solution for all languages)--Red*star 10:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You meen "or destroy valuable work of other bots"... Chaddy 11:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Even in that case, why destroy valuable work of bots (as articles are correct) ? And if you think we should do it, why only in volapük wiki and not in all wiki’s ? I believe we should come with a fair solution: if bots-generated articles are bad, they should be deleted everywhere. And if they are acceptable everywhere else, they should also be acceptable in volapük wiki. Why rules should be different for Volapük ? Is it a cursed language ?--Red*star 11:23, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I keep suggesting that this whole bot-question become a topic for discussion at a higher level, not only for vo.wp. Chaddy for instance is obviously against it, since s/he thinks that simply mentioning 'bots did it' is sufficient to make something bad. There obviously is a difference in viewpoints -- I almost want to say a cultural difference -- here that should be addressed at a higher level. --Smeira 22:40, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose--Loquetudigas--87.217.248.201 22:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Please, provide better arguments for such a measure. -Aleator (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is rubbish. There is no categorical difference between a bot and a human edit. Bots simply make repetitive tasks a lot easier to accomplish, with a lot less human effort. English Wikipedia owes a lot to bots and to those who run them. For what it's worth, User:Smeira, whose work this proposal is targeted at, is very capable at running a bot and is a productive contributor. --Oldak Quill 00:30, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Slade ♠ 01:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose These negative proposals are such a waste of effort. Go build something good instead. Dovi 05:46, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - we've decided that this edition of Wikipedia should be kept. Provided that what they are doing is broadly in line with the objectives of Wikimedia, and there's no evidence that it isn't, let them decide how to create articles. Warofdreams 09:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Listen. I am not a fan of the Volapük Wikipedia as it is now. But this proposal is bad in more than one way. First: once a Wikipedia is created, it is not open for anyone to interfere with its policies. The only thing we can determine is whether to close it or not, we are not sopposed to tell them how the community should build up their Wikipedia. Second: the above proposal would, in my opinion be counter-productive and sheer spoilt labour. To begin with, it would undo all of Smeira's bot work on vo:. Then, it would take much work by the already very busy developers, who would have to strip it, then close it, then move its content to Incubator, then move its content back to vo: and finally reopen the Wikipedia. Meanwhile, the community has to do a request which will take months to fulfil. A sheer waste of time and labour, for the result, which would be either no Volapük Wikipedia at all or one stripped down, certainly isn't worth all this. Yes, I'd like to see the Volapük Wikipedia have more content but that's none of our effing business! Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 09:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The English wikipedia was also started by machine, (copying many articles from Encyclopedias that their copy right ran out already). As a member of a small wiki community i can testify how desperate we r in need of such models to kick start interest in a small language project. I hope he develops robotic machines to start articles for my small language Yiddish in the yi.wikipedia Thanks--יודל 10:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The volapuk Wikipedia is casting ridicule on all small wiki communities. In the long run it will be detrimental to the Yiddish wikipedia, too. --Lou Crazy 04:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen the opposite as well -- positive reactions from e.g. conlang wikis, or messages of support... If all goes well, there will even be a little 2-minute interview in Dutch television (RTL-4) in a couple of months, stressing among other things the good consequences that Wikipedia projects can have for languages with few speakers and with the Volapuk Wikipedia as an example. Again: is the concern something from the general public, or is it rather from Wikipedians with a different kind of philosophy? What I usually hear is, as I already said above, that "anyone can edit" beats "there are lots of stubs" anytime in the list of worrisome features of Wikipedia projects. --Smeira 09:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Closure has been rejected. So, I think, it's up to the users of Volapük Wikipedia to hold their project clean. Bot-generated articles (stubs) are ok as long as they are in correct language. Let the Volapük speakers decide if it is. -- AlimanRuna 11:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. No definitive reasons other than bot, bot, bot, interwiki competition.. blah blah blah... Please grow up. Different chapters need to develop in different ways according to the feasibility and number of volunteers. Please see this for a change. Thanks--Eukesh 15:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeI don't speak Volapük, but I think that this articles created by bots are better and more relevant than those of Lombard wiki. However, this wiki need more humans users by the expansion the articles. Sorry for my English--Guillem d'Occam (Digues, t'escolto) 17:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. I just don't see the point. In my opinion, this "cleanup" project is a far greater waste of time and effort than the supposed "harm" the presence of a multitude of bot-generated stubs would ever cause.Ezhiki 20:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Bots are useful on many wikis, not the least of which is en. As long as the bot-articles on vo are in Volapük and not some other language, I don't see any harm. --Merovingian 09:13, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No reason to close. It seems that there is enough interest. Piercetp 18:29, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly opposed. Have generated articles received the same response in different wikipedias or is this the product of competitive worries regarding which project has "more articles"?. Volapük Wikipedia receives my full support. Why we should we perpetrate a widespread deletion of Volapük articles? Let's not concentrate on destroying, let's come together to transmit more knowledge. We shall not garner our full potential by getting carried away with competitive disputes, since we can all see the whole of wikipedia as a united effort that helps all humanity. Help Volapük, don't destroy this magnificent effort! -Khuyana Ankuwillk'a 17:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Of course bot articles receive a similar response in many other wikipedias. Where's the difference? In other wikipedias, a smaller percentage of articles are bot-generated, and most of them are used as the basis for user improvement. But in volapuk almost all articles are bot generated, and with *twentyfive* active speakers in the world it's really difficult that 100.000 bot-generated articles will ever be human-improved. --Lou Crazy 04:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually no, they haven't. The answer in de.wp is very different from the answer in nl.wp, pl.wp, or pt.wp, or even in en.wp, even though there are people expressing concerns there. It's always been a Wikipedia-internal question, and different policies have been drafted and followed accordingly. Further improvement is also possible with bots, as happens also in other wikis; if this is done, it is quite possible that all articles in the Volapuk Wikipedia will be further improved. We're working on that, and it should start before this proposal discussion is closed. Twenty-five active speakers? Yes, but like all conlangs (such as Esperanto), its main support basis comes from new people coming into the community. This is how the vo.wp community has increased thus far: only one out of five new active users comes from this group of 25. With conlangs, outsiders who become interested and learn the language are the real basis -- and that's more than 25. --Smeira
Oppose Information should never be removed, only improved. 68.47.43.116 21:45, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Dear anonymous user, thank you for your vote. Please open an account at Meta -- with a link to your account in your main Wikipedia project -- for your vote to be valid. --83.85.142.49 10:32, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal is not to remove information, but information-less pages. --Lou Crazy 04:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Since the proposal is to remove good stubs, then it obviously IS about removing information. The pages proposed to be deleted are not information-less -- just look at them. --Smeira 10:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Per Eukesh. Ninane 21:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - vo.wp is unique because those bot generated articles. Imagine near future, where with linguistic science development bot generated articles appear in other, so called natural languages. I don't think within the same future humans will read databases directly and will not require more descriptive input text. vo.wp gives us unique possibility to practically test such things nowadays without no substantial costs except those programmer who wrote this bots. Wikipedia in not monument of our heroic past but treasure gift for our descendants, and believe me, even garbages are better than nothing. Xirkor 22:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose- Vo. wikipedia is a valuable asset to wikimedia. As Jimmy Wales stated something along the lines of, "We need to help developing countries and languages with education they cannot obtain". By screwing with it hinders this result. --penubag 06:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Erm. This first attempt of a constructed language (which was marginalised e.g. by Esperanto) has nothing to do with developing countries. Please read what Volapük is about. Arnomane 10:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain why vo.wiki is a "valuable asset"? Given that there is no "developing country" involved... --Lou Crazy 04:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for starters, it's trying something different -- just like Wikipedia itself did, back in the old days when most outsiders were skeptical and thought it had no chance of working. Also, a Volapuk Wikipedia shows how the WMF gives support to disseminating knowledge in any language, to suit the wishes of all consumers -- speakers of conlangs like Esperanto, Volapuk, Interlingua, Novial, Ido, speakers of dialects like Zeeuws (Dutch), Voro (Estonian) or Nnapulitano (Italian), etc., who also don't represent "developing countries" and who could all use other Wikipedias, but who prefer to use Esperanto,... instead. --Smeira 10:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Maksim 18:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose move to Incubator, strongly support deletion of bot articles. - ∅ (∅), 23:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Am I right in assuming that a sizeable percentage of those who are voting against the move to incubator would support a trimming of the number of bot-articles? Then maybe the proposal should be split into two separate ones, one for the removal of bot entries, the other for the move to incubator. --Lou Crazy 04:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You probably are. But that was the point of Yekrats' proposal, wasn't it? It has already been suggested that we all move the discussion there. --Smeira 10:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The deciding admin does not need to make this a binary decision. He might be able to find some sort of middle ground that is not as egregious as the initial proposal, but still addresses the issue. -- Yekrats 01:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose to this proposal. --LadyInGrey 14:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose -- Deleting stubs is a ridiculous idea. Stubs are there so they can be expanded, and every Wikipedia is full of them. While the proposal simply seems to be made because the number of stubs is extremely high, this is just a function of the fact that there is a process going on -- the stubs are being updated regularly, and the number will decrease over time as the human contributors do their work. -- BRG 21:56, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

General comments

For all people who say this should be done, because Volapük costs too much money. Ever heard of restore a deleted page? Every edit will still be kept and would still cost money even though you delete all pages. --OosWesThoesBes 11:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is not a matter of money (who did say that?) but that it harms Wikimedia project appearance. See Meta:Babel, where I introduced a Japanese coverage - it reported this dispute, reaction from other communities including esperanto and called Volapuk Wikipedia what doesn't deserve the name of encyclopedia. Placing it as one of "our major projects" harm our reputation in my opinion. --Aphaia 11:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In that case we've got a different opinion, lucky for me there's right of saying. 1. It's a useful project. 2. Enough contributors and contributions. 3. It has got pages, which are, in my eyes, no stubs. 4. Then don't place it under "our major projects" but under "our special projects" --OosWesThoesBes 11:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Reply to Aphaia)Easy: simply stop calling it "one of the major projects" (review the criteria?). I believe nobody at Volapük wanted to be one of the majors at this point anyway. Malafaya 11:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, Malafaya, See the Babel discussion. Smeira opposes to remove it from the portal as one of 100K+ project. That is the major reason for me to support this clean up. If he struggles to keep it as "100K+ project" to claim of the rank of major projects, so our next move should remove this attempt for creating a fake appearance, I think. --Aphaia 11:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aphaia, I read "diagonally", I couldn't find Smeira's reluctance but I believe you. What portal is referred there? The www.wikipedia.org page already doesn't link to Volapük Wikipedia. Malafaya 11:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing it out. I agree on that it was removed from the top section. But it is still on the 100K+ raw. So I think I have a good reason to retain my position still. Whether if Smeira is reluctant or not is perhaps our difference of way of taking his words. His position about removal looks me - as the above also - reluctant. Did he call it "cheat"? But there may be another way of interpretation. --Aphaia 11:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am indeed reluctant, Aphaia. Let me point out that the discussion at Meta:Babel came to the conclusion that it would be better to use other criteria (like the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles) rather than deleting articles. The 100K+ article line is not a good propaganda measure for Wikipedia: it's easy to attack it as "propaganda" in the bad sense of the word -- it doesn't measure what it seems to be measuring. It looks to me as though all kinds of wrong reasons and half truths lurk behind this request. As I said there: use other criteria, create another page listing wikipedias by this better criterion, mention the reasons why you did this (by saying why the new criterion is better than simple article count), and then change your "publicity" pages to reflect that. In the end, that's a net improvement: people will see that the WF is improving their quality measurement, and that's positive PR. In the end, everybody wins. --Smeira 12:18, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it's to be removed from the List of Wikipedias, in that case, I would also oppose. It's a plain list of Wikipedias with basic statistics. Removing Volapük from this list is simply tampering with a list of projects (Volapük Wikipedia does not exist?). It's not our fault that your "biggest/best Wikipedias" criteria is based on a single article count from this list. Malafaya 01:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, anyone willing to delete contents on the Polish Wikipedia on this reasoning too? I clicked on Random Page 4 times. The 4 times I got a stub on some city, all articles looked the same. Polish Wiki has a depth of 7, not much higher that Volapük... Just check the Polish interwikis on minor towns worldwide... Come on guys. Are you sure it's not just prejudice against the Volapük language? Malafaya 11:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not change the subject. I pointed out a bad coverage about the project - not only Volapuk but Wikimedia project as a whole. Can you please point out a similar coverage about Polish Wikipedia? If so, we would like the Polish Wikipedia community to improve it - as for Volapuk it has no community, and not responded the bad reputation effectively. That is why we need to take an action. --Aphaia 11:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please actually read my request. You will be surprised to recognize that I even did think about the polish wikipedia. Quote of myself:

In contrast to every other Wikipedia that used bot generated articles to a larger extent, almost 100% of Volapük Wikipedia content (page numbers and bytes) were generated by a bot [...]

[...] which should be adapted to similar cases in future if it works out.

Wether there is need for action in other Wikipedias is not on the table right now. Volapük Wikipedia has gone simply too far and if others did the same mistake, maybe this thing can be turned into a more general rule after it worked in Volapük. Arnomane 11:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aphaia: well, I'm sorry for only now jumping in but only now I found out there is a discussion about this subject. Truth is the Volapük Wikipedia has increased its quality greatly in the past month but nobody here wants to measure that. Of course, dealing with 100K articles is not easy but it will get to the desired point where quality is good overall.

Arnomane: that's what I mean: bot. The articles I saw were created by some user tsca.bot: 4 out of 4. I'm not saying here that anything should be done about Polish just like I don't think anything should be done about Volapük other than warning. Work is currently being done to increase the quality. Article count has been quite stable for more than a month and work has been redirected to improve the existing contents. Malafaya 11:50, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What do you call elusive? All Wikipedias create articles with bots. All Wikipedias have stubs. Some have more than others in any of these categories. There is no rule on this and maybe that is what is actually missing. By proposing massive deletion or closure of a single Wikipedia for reasons that apply to any Wikipedia to a lesser or greater degree, you're applying a subjective criterion and most of all your request will probably be interpreted as discriminating. I pointed out Polish as one with a big ratio of both just like Volapük. And I sincerely would like to know if those Polish interwikis in, for instance, American towns, are less rubbish to you than Volapük ones. Malafaya 12:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You give elusive answers. Simply look at the raw numbers and you will see that elusive answers and weak comparisons (ala "others also did bad things") are not approriate here. Arnomane 11:56, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aromane: You're the one using elusive answers. The numbers are what they are: lots of bot-created stubs at vo.wp. But the point is that you think this is a "problem", because bot-created stubs are "bad". I challenge that assumption: please show that this is so. If bot-created articles are not necessarily bad, there is no problem with the number of articles they created -- unless we again fall into the statistical misuse of article count as a measure of quality or good work. --Smeira 12:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aphaia: in addition to Malafaya's point (that the quality has been increasing steadily at vo.wp, a point nobody wants to look at), I'll say, as I said there: I saw better coverage elsewhere (in fact, there's a TV program here in the Netherlands who wants to do a little 2-minute report on Volapük because of the Vükiped -- wouldn't it be bad coverage if they had to report that non-Volapük users forced Volapük users to delete articles?...). And "good coverage" doesn't seem to me like a good reason. If you change the criteria and improve the quality measurements, you get rid of the "Volapük problem" (just see the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles) and you can tell everybody that the new criteria are better -- "we're not simply using article count anymore, we're using more intelligent criteria". Think of the publicity value of this claim. --Smeira 12:32, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ich stimmte für eine radikale Durcharbeitung der Volapük'schen Wikipedia, weil es dort eine vielzahl von miserabeln Artikeln gibt (beispielsweise alle Artikel über Monate, siehe vo:Febul) und weil es dort keine Qualitätssicherung gibt. Ich weiss nicht, wie viele Benutzer dort aktiv sind und sich engagieren, die Artikel besser zu machen. Und so verrotten einige Artikel und bleiben Monate lang unbearbeitet. Einige von euch sagten, die Volapük Wikipedia sei gut als eine Quelle, gar als eine Metapedia, wo man Zahlen und Informationen über alles findet. Die meisten Daten dort sind aber meistens von einer anderen Wikipedia entnommen worden. Eine Metapedia zu haben ist eine perfekte Idee, aber dann bitte nicht für jeden Artikel oder jedes chemische Element einen Artikel erstellen und denken, man sei eine Enzyklopädie.--Petar Marjanovic 12:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some of you said, that the Volapük Wikipedia is good as source, as a Metapedia, where you can find figures and information about everything. But most of the datas there are often tooken from an other Wikipedia. Having a Metapedia is good, it's a very good idea. But every village, every chemical element should not have an own article.--Petar Marjanovic 12:12, 26 December 2007 (UTC) [reply]

Lieber Petar, Stubs sind nicht unbedingt ein guter Grund, um "radikale Durcharbeitung" zu wollen (schau mal de:O'Fallon (Illinois): darf ich vielleicht de.wp-Admin werden, um solche "miserable Stubs" aus de.wp wegzulöschen?) Ich unterstütze auch die Idee einer "Metapedia". Das hat aber mit der Idee, Volapük-Stubs zu löschen, nichts zu tun.

Dear Petar, stubs are not necessarily a reason to want a "radical reworking" of a Wikipedia (look at de:O'Fallon (Illinois): should I request admin rights at de.wp to go delete such "miserable stubs"?) I also support the idea of a "Metapedia". But this has nothing to do with the idea of deleting Volapük stubs. Smeira 01:55, 28 december 2007.

This edit summary here confirms what I was saying above about discrimination. This voting induces people that are just haters of something (in this particular case, Volapük, or even minority languages in general). I wonder how many of the above supporters are actually supporting this specific case of Volapük Wikipedia or because they hate Volapük or minority languages and therefore should not be taken serioulsy... What people are allowed to vote here? Just about anyone? This is not an election, this is about other people's work, other people's will to improve a project. What legitimacy exists for just anybody come here and cast his/her vote at random or holding a grudge? I would seriously accept a voting initiated by the WMF itself, with serious voters but this voting just seems ridiculous as it is. "Just come in and cast your stone at the sinner", it seems. I'll abstain from further comments here as right now I can't see any seriousness or legitimacy in any result that comes from this voting. Malafaya 17:02, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a hater of Volapük, quite the contrary. Can you please differentiate between me (the one that started this request) and someone else? I am just upset of your attitude to imply that I am a crazy hardliner and that I hate minorities: I do definitely not. But for you everybody is a hardliner and whatnot who does not agree with the current state of Volapük Wikipedia and who says that there is need for a fundamental solution in Volapük Wikipedia. Arnomane 22:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that it's you who doesn't read properly my comments: ...I wonder how many of the above supporters are actually supporting this specific case of Volapük Wikipedia or because they hate Volapük... , I never mentioned you specifically. The question is: how many, some for sure. I actually believe your thought is legitimate but I wonder how many of the supporting votes are in the same wavelength as yours. OK? Malafaya 11:28, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Adminship?

There are two parts to the request. If you do not have a background in Volapük as is not clear at all there is no point in giving you admin rights to this project. Even worse you would impose yourself on the existing Volapük community and assume seniority because your pov would be imposed as a consequence of this proposal. What I find unconscionable is that you do not even have a profile at this time while making a request like this. 00:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

When you argue that articles like Febul are not good, there is room to argue your case. The method that you choose is imho not appropriate. GerardM 00:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quote of myself: I therefore ask for adminship rights in Volapük Wikipedia or any other appropriate measure in order to remove the articles [...]. I leave the option how to achieve the article deletion open to the people that comment/decide, as long as it reaches the goal. The admin idea was one option that came into my mind. I just offered my help in case people agree with me that the majority of articles in this Wikipedia needs to be deleted. Arnomane 00:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please write what you want to see done and how you want to execute it. Without your involvement in the language and so straight after the request for closure for the project being turned down, you just have not accepted what has been voted on. this proposal is not credible at all without some practical ideas, a worked out road map. GerardM 00:40, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly this is one of the most detailed proposals on such things (compare it to the rest). Furthermore I made it super clear what I want:

Deletion of articles from Volapük Wikipedia, which were not written or substantially expanded by humans
Moving this project to the Incubator.

I see no way how to make these points clearer. With regard to the "how to delete". I trust ourselves that we can find a sensible yet effective solution. I don't need to propose everything myself. Arnomane 01:14, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your points are clearer, but not your procedure. If you want to be an admin at vo.wp, you should request admin privileges (at the vo:Vükiped:Kafetar, for instance) and wait for support from other users. For your request to look good, you should also have an account and have made at least some contributions to vo.wp in the last few months. Even though your proposal is well defined, it is not clear that its motives are good: there are good solutions for all the problems that you mention without changing the hard work done on vo.wp. If you don't like it, don't do it; but not everybody agrees. I think "tolerance" is the key word here. --Smeira 12:00, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on Rationale

"This is not a proposal for closing vo.wp": if this is not a closure proposal, why is this discussed in a section that is only for closure proposals? Shouldn't this be moved somewhere else, then? Anyway, on the proposed points of the rationale:

If you read the reasons given by those who voted for supporting the Volapük Wikipedia, you'll see that the (undeniable) historical importance of Volapük wasn't mentioned more than a couple of times. The main reason for opposing closure was actually that the proposal itself was not well thought, had no real strong arguments (all arguments presented had flaws that were duly pointed out and never really corrected by the proposers), and read more like prejudice against people who choose not to follow the de.wp style sheet.
Several points here:
- "People are upset" is not a good argument. If they're upset, they should discuss their problems, present arguments, and try to convince the others, trying to reach consensus. If they're upset, but don't manage to convince the others, they should understand that their upset feelings are not shared by all, and should refrain from further action. In other words: they should show tolerance. Tolerance doesn't imply support or even agreement: it implies respect for the opinion of others. If this is not done, then trolling is not far away.
- "One contributor". We're now around 5 with active contributions in the last month, not counting anonymous contributions. Please have a look at the contributions of e.g. Malafaya, Robert, LadyInGrey, Chabi, Zifs etc.
- "100'000 articles": the worthlessness of article count as a measure of quality should by now be obvious to anyone. If you want to know which Wikipedias are better and which are worse, article number is not what you should look at. Please use e.g. the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles, or then please come up with a new measure of quality and present it to others. Complaining about articles number is simply a en:Misuse of statistics.
- Interwiki links are not the responsability of any Wikipedia. If you want to delete interwiki links to vo.wp from your home wikipedia, feel free to do so. Please request bot users to help you with that. (And also please think a bit more about why there are interwiki links at all -- when you classify links to stubs as "useless", you seem to be missing the point.)
- Cheating of edit statistics: I think of it as demonstrating, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that article count is not what you should be looking at if you're interested in comparing quality across Wikipedias. Please have a look at en:Misuse of statistics, at the discussion of the proposal for closure of the Volapük Wikipedia, and at the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles.
- Abuse of Wikimedia resources: how? how much? which resources are being "abused"? what is the cost? The best estimates I've heard go about a few cents by month -- which any of the Volapük Wikipedians would be delighted to pay. Without numbers, this looks like a potential red herring.
- No use of bot articles for interested readers: what exactly does this mean? Is a human-created article like de:O'Fallon (Illinois) more "useful for potential readers" then the (much better written) vo:O'Fallon (Illinois)? If criteria are not presented, one may suppose there's a lurking immanentist claim here of the kind "an article is never good if it was bot-created" and "an article is always good if it was human-created", both of which are clearly fallacies, as the previous example shows.
- A Wikipedia driven by a single person: we now have two active admins, Smeira and Malafaya, and several other contributors. Please check current statistics before making such claims. (There is a question, of course, if any Wikipedia with few admins/contributors can really be NPOV; but this is a different -- and potentially interesting -- topic.)
Wikipedia is... I think Wikipedia is a very flexible thing, which is being formed and changed all the time, and I think the user communities are the ones who decide what they want to do. If you want to bring up the discussion of what the Volapük Wikipedia is or should be, please open an account there and start a discussion with the other users. There are several things I think are wrong with other Wikipedias (say, de.wp), but if I'm not a contributor there, I don't think I have the right to request outside help to force them to change. The correct way to express my disagreement would be to go to de.wp and explain my opinions there and try to convince the others.
The Lombard Wikipedia. Two points:
- Its community came to the conclusion that it was better to delete the articles. Note that the decision was not imposed from outside: defenders of the Lombard Wikipedia, who were active contributors, decided to do this and acted on their (majority) decision. I don't see any active Volapük contributors here supporting this proposal.
- The main reason for the problems in the Lombard Wikipedia was the use of an "artificial dialect" which other users did not recognize and considered illegitimate. Furthermore, there were accusations of anti-Italian or nationalistic feelings (from both sides, actually). If they couldn't even decide how articles should be written in their Wikipedia, and what the right tone was to treat outsiders, then there is of course good reason to rethink the whole thing. The number of bot articles was cited as one argument in one section of the discussion; it wasn't the most important one, and it wasn't decisive in any way.

In the end, a final comment: this proposal looks more like the work of people who felt angry because they couldn't get their ideas accepted, and who want to stop someone else's work just because their ideas of what it should be are "the only good ones". There are more relevant questions here (as Aphaia points out in the general discussion section), but it is interesting that none of them was mentioned as a motive here. "Tolerance" is a good word here: I'd recommend the proposers to consider it. There's a lot of work for everyone in every Wikipedia; why not go about making a good encyclopedia instead of loosing time condemning others for doing something different? --Smeira 11:47, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Plase write shorter. I am smply lost in your text and fear that I misunderstand you. Arnomane 11:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot to say. If something is lost or misunderstood, just ask me, here or on my talk page. I can also speak German if need be. --Smeira 11:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is not the language that is a problem. It is your writing style. Give plain simple points. Arnomane 12:23, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I did so. None of my points is longer or has a different style than the ones you present in the rationale for the proposal. Again, if there's anything you can't follow there, ask me, and I'll express it in other words. --Smeira 12:26, 26 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Importing to Incubator

Importing those 114.000 articles to Incuibator would be – apart from that importing all content to Incubator would be the same as closing – quite difficult, maybe even impossible. I'm one of them who run imports to Incubator and it would take ages to get all pages via vo:Special:Allpages (to prefix them) and to upload them via incubator:Special:Import because the maximum execution time of 60 seconds would expire. Furthermore, also when all bot-created articles are deleted, I think there'll still be many articles to import to Incubator, and why import when the proposal for closing has ended with a "keep" result? So, this is a second attempt to close the Volapük Wikipedia because taking away the pages is closing the wiki. --MF-Warburg 16:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I propose a different idea: eliminating the bot-created dismal stubs (choosing a lower bytes limit, say, deleting articles shorter than 500 bytes, not counting disambiguations and such), and then not move vo.wp to the Incubator, which would be a difficult and potentially wrong thing to do, but leave it as any other Wikipedia. It can also be placed under a strict observation to ensure the volapük community does not make the same mistakes all over again, but without taking Vükiped back to the Incubator. What do you think? -- Leptictidium 14:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is basically the same as Yekrats' proposal, isn't it? --Smeira 03:12, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Framing the discusssion

Disclosure: I was drawn to this discussion by Arnomane's blog posting.

I believe that the issue of how an article is created is a red herring. Creating an article with the assistance of a bot is intended to be an act similar to sowing seeds in that any outside observer expects both -- the article & the seed -- to grow. If bot-created articles do grow into useful articles -- as did many of the Rambot-created articles, to cite one example -- then it is a good thing; if too many of these bot-created articles fail to grow, then it is a bad thing, & shows that the wikipedia where they were created is not viable.

The question in this case is whether there is a viable community that will support the Volapük Wikipedia: some believe there is, some believe there is not & argue that this use of a bot was done to obscure this fact. However, using a bot to create thousands of articles only proves that someone wanted to create thousands of articles. It does not prove or disprove that a viable Volapük community exists. Should this proposal fail to carry, I believe that we should disable use of bots on this Wikipedia for 6-12 months & see just how many of these articles become more than just stubs, then discuss whether this is enough to justify an independent Volapük Wikipedia or to take the appropriate action to move it to the incubator. -- Llywrch 18:31, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why Volapük

Why not Limburgish? Who should say this wiki has grown 750 articles today? IT DOUBLED IN SIZE!!!! It will be larger than the English Wiktionary in a few weeks time! These are the problem areas! Not a Wikipedia who doesn't grow anymore and recieves bad comments because it's big already! If the other wiki's continue to grow as fast, Volapük will be on the 25th place over a year! --Umbel 12:54, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's the problem? Let it double in size! If I want a good sized Wiktionary, I'll make one. --OosWesThoesBes 13:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, Umbel, would you mind discussing the reason why you think that growing fast with a bot is bad for a wiktionary -- assuming, of course, that the articles it creates are readable and contain accurate, useful, and relevant information? (If you do this, you'll be the first one on this page.) --Smeira 03:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's the problem. They are not useful: there are over 600 of these articles. Many of these articles, which only say blablabla is an Arabian word (they even have a typo in it: it's euvergesjreve and not evergesjreve). This article sais that it's written in Arabian writing (definitely Latin) Bar-le-Duc? On a Wiktionary? These are just a few examples of how low the quality of the articles of OwtbBot is. Today only 400 of such pages have been created, 400!! 3 days ago there were 966 articles of which 50% was bot-made. Now there are over 2100 articles of which say 80% is bot-made. So almost 80% of the Wiktionary is trash. Umbel 10:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, these pages have problems, and you are right to mention them. But should they be deleted? Or improved? Lots of pages in en.wp for instance have spelling mistakes; I myself (as an elf) have corrected some of them. Bots can do that. Are some articles incorrectly tagged, or do they contain wrong information ("Arabic text" when there is no Arabic text, etc.)? Yes, that should be corrected. 400 pages with mistakes created? Yes, they should all be corrected (that can be done by a bot: if the errors are similar, they can all be corrected by a bot in one day, too.) Are the pages about numbers not relevant to a Wiktionary? You may have a point there, which you should report to the admin (though I note the English Wiktionary does have pages on numbers: e.g. wikt:en:22, wikt:en:98, etc.). Are there 'too many stubs'? Well, I argue elsewhere that stubs are not necessarily bad, not even lots of them, if their (small) content is readable, relevant, accurate and useful. Note that the Ido wiktionary -- which contains more articles that the Volapük Wikipedia (Ido is another constructed language like Volapük and Esperanto, in fact it is a descendant of Esperanto) -- does have a lot of small stubs (human-created, but bots could easily produce exactly the same result; e.g.: wikt:io:fenêtre, wikt:io:linn, etc.); yet it is not a bad project -- in fact, if you look at its contributors' discussions and at the overall structure, you'll see it's a very good project.
Anyway, none of the above are reasons to delete the pages, but simply to report them. Now, you will have reason to ask for deleting them if you report these mistakes and then, after a reasonable amount of time, nothing happens. If the admins are not taking any action to correct the errors, if they're simply ignoring them, then you have a reason for outsider interference. But, from my experience with OosWesThoesBes, I think he will try to take care of these problems. --Smeira 11:15, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'll correct the arabian things. Please note that the numbers from 101 untill 600 are not mentioned on any other Wiktionary and are useful for that reason. About the towns in France. Why not? Please take a dictionary. Amsterdam and Brussel are mentioned, so why Bar-le-Duc not? --OosWesThoesBes 13:03, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If everything is right all evergesjreves have been replaced with euvergesjreves. I don't know for sure, because my computer crashed twice... --OosWesThoesBes 13:33, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know OWTB personally in "real life" and I know why he wants to have a gigantic Wiki in Limburgish. He wants to show that Limburgish is a real language and not just a dialect. Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Limburgish Wiktionary was a bad idea, but a radical clean-up not. Maybe it has to be proposed in a few days if he keeps creating stubs about numbers. In the meantime 700 articles with the same content exist: 700 is a number. ¿It's written in Limburgish as 700? and a table with nonsense and unuseful information. Are 700 of these stubs necessairy? I have nothing against bots and bot articles. I'm currently checking vo.wp and looking to the content I might oppose this request, but if a town is asituated in Meuse, it's not smart to locate it in Lorraine (the coördinates are not correct on many stubs). li.wikt is useless and I feel obligated to rescue li.wikt before it's too late. Umbel 14:39, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doog d'r den zelf get aan! --OosWesThoesBes 14:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@Umbel: let me know which pages you think have the wrong coordinates, and I'll investigate. How many are they? (The locating dot does seem to be somewhat displaced -- by about 20 km or so -- with respect to the actual position; this is a problem they already have in fr.wp, as one of their admins told me on my talk page and may derive from some slight imperfection in the map itself. Since Meuse and Lorraine are adjacent, this might explain your impression. Check the corresponding fr.wp pages to see if they similarly misplace the cities/villages you've found.) --Smeira 21:36, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative solutions

It has occurred to me that all "problems" mentioned in the rationale for this proposal have solutions other than deleting useful vo.wp stubs. If these possible solutions are not seriously discussed, how exactly is this proposal "fair and balanced" rather than a mere expresion of the personal biases of a certain group of people? Consider:

interwiki links: can be solved independently (e.g., as Kameraad Pjotr had suggested on the closure discussion, by putting vo.wp in your spam filter; or by discussing and changing bot policy). But: is this really a problem? Why should people be angry about lots of interwiki links? Even links to stubs? Most interwiki links are links to stubs or small articles anyway (just click on a number of interwiki links to randomly chosen languages from various pages -- you'll see it).
cheating on statistics: everybody knows article count is not a good statistical measure of anything except... the number of articles. So: select a different criterion, make a new list based on this new criterion (the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles is an example) and use this list instead.
abuse of Wikimedia resources: the "abuse" is too small to mention. The average Wikimedia user probably throws out food leftovers worth more per month than the whole vo.wp costs the WF in a year. (If you don´t agree, can you provide better numbers?).
no use of bot articles for interested users: that is not really a problem, just a statement of belief. Can anyone name a user who thought a certain Volapük article would be useful but then noticed it wasn't -- and the reason was that the article was bot-created?
(The rationale mentions there were many more reasons in the proposal for closure. I went back there and couldn't find them. Could someone mention here what other problems vo.wp had created that have not been mentioned here?)
Neutral point of view: that is a potential problem; but I think it is lessened by the presence of more active users. The way to solve it would be to get even more active users at vo.wp of course, not delete articles. In what way would deleting articles contribute to a more NPOV vo.wp? (In fact, can anyone mention any article in vo.wp which could be considered as a NPOV-violation? Such articles were found easily on the Lombard wikipedia, as I recall.)
Bot articles contain similar sentences. Is this a problem? I could run the bot to vary the sentences from page to page, there is always some other way to say the same. But why is this a problem? (Note that among the 23,000 remaining articles in the Lombard Wikipedia, there are many which were bot-created but were simply improved rather than deleted.) (I will again mention, for the record, that bot-created stubs are not bad; they are simply stubs, and should be judged like any other stubs. Again: vo:O'Fallon (Illinois), though bot-created, is much better than de:O'Fallon (Illinois), which is human-created. Should someone request admin rights on de.wp to delete "miserable Artikel" like de:O'Fallon (Illinois)? --Smeira 01:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Until you do not accept that generating nearly 100% of Volapük Wikipedia with a bot was downright wrong and should never be done again I see absolutely no chance to come to any compromise with you. Your stategy seems to be to jeopardize every constructive critical debate on Volapük Wikipedia with cloudy lengthy words and I definitely don't want to play that game with you. Arnomane 10:13, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If this is so obvious, why don't you explain why? Why is a large numer of bot-generated useful stubs bad? You are so convinced, please tell us why. Or else it will look like a religious dogma. I repeat: I challenge this idea. Please present arguments. No words here are longer than 3 syllables; there should be no problem. --Smeira 21:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You have nothing to say about other people and their works. Keep your nose out of it and stay in DAS Heimat. Stop spoiling other peoples work .... oh no that is a German tradition I forgot. Waerth 10:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have You others to say as personal attacs. Liesel 10:30, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Waerth it was pointed out how baldly this project affects other Wikipedias. Furthermore please learn better German until you teach me about my mother language or simply stop doing it. I also don't do the same with your mother language. Thank you. Arnomane 10:39, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, it wasn't. Every one of the "problems" you mention is addressed in the suggested solutions here in this section. You refuse to discuss them; you show yourself as biased and prejudiced. Let me state this clearly: why don't you discuss the solutions proposed for the "problems" you listed rather than repeating your religious belief about bot articles being bad? It looks as if you don't want to solve the problems you raise; you simply want to undo other people's work. --Smeira 21:23, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@Waerth: Tja, Waerth, helaas heeft-ie gelijk: die Heimat, niet das Heimat. Maar das Vaterland zou goed zijn geweest hoor! :-) Een probleempje: het is geen goed idee om Arnomanes gedrag als 'German tradition' te bekritiseren. Wat je hebt gezegd lijkt op een vooroordeel, daar er Duitsers hier zijn die zich goed hebben gedragen, en die zelfs dit voorstel niet ondersteunen. --Smeira 11:34, 30 December 2007 (UTC) Yes, Waerth, unfortunately he's right: die Heimat, not das Heimat. But das Vaterland would have worked :-)! Now a problem: it's not a good idea to criticize Arnomane's behavior as a "German tradition". What you said looks like prejudice, since there are Germans here who have behaved well, and who even don't support this proposal. --Smeira 11:34, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, a set of rules should be created for cases like this. How many Wikimedia projects are subject to a Closure Proposal 2 or 3 months after they started, without giving the user a chance to actually start it? Is this fair? Like this, there are many others votings that are plainly subjective (in my opinion, this voting is such a thing, envolving love/hate feelings towards a project) rather that conscious ones. A voting like this is just a mass phenomenon. It doesn't reflect any real "justice", just how many "fans my team has" (it's very easy to detect the German majority in the supporters). I would like to propose to users to create a bunch of objective and fair rules for closure. After that, time should be given to all (not just Volapük or any particular project) to implement or to abide by those rules/criteria.

For all those who think I'm a Volapük fanatic, I'm not. Volapük Wikipedia just fell from the sky. I happened to be curious for an interwiki link and found that Wiki. After checking it out, I thought I could work on it to improve it. It's obvious that the contents is not of the best quality but you would be surprised if you could measure the quality improvement of the past, say, 2 months. And this is how people should think: improve, not destroy. Actually, this proposal is worse than a close: by closing, the contents is frozen and copied somewhere else. In this proposal, basically most contents will be destroyed and still the project will be "closed" (moved to Incubator). Malafaya 11:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note that 'Bot articles contain similar sentences' is a bit of a non-complaint. For example, take the number articles on en.wp. The introduction to all these is pretty much the same. "N is the natural number following N-1 and preceding N+1". Regardless of whether that was created by a human or a bot, it is a good and reasonable first sentence to the article and in these cases consistency is a good thing, because it makes finding information easier for people already familiar with the format. I don't see 'bot style' as a problem at all, provided it is 'good style'. If it is not, then write a better bot to fix it! --HappyDog 20:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Project which boycotts interwiki links from other project written in a valid language may be faced with interwiki boycott, too. --Millosh 21:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

Let me please portray my thoughts about the whole:

At first I want to express, that I think that this proposal is not viable. The proposal is about moving the wiki back to the Incubator. If you look at Proposals for closing projects/Archive you can see, that a closure carried out in most cases does allow for re-creation of the project. For example if a viable community for Kanuri is formed, the closed project will get a new Wikipedia. So a move back to the Incubator is effectively the same as a closure of the project and a closure was rejected. Implementation of this proposal would eviscerate the outcome of the recent rejected proposal.

Well, there is the second point about deleting all bot-generated content. Smeira's O'Fallon example makes clear, that bot-generated content is not per se worse than human-generated content. So we should look at the actual content. The problematic content is created by the user SmeiraBot. If I got it right, all problematic bot content is created solely by this one user (if that is not correct, please notice me). I assume, the bot articles are created in series (like "articles on all American towns", "articles on all French communes" etc.). Every of these series should be reviewed. For example the series on American towns (example vo:O'Fallon (Illinois)) seems to be of good quality, comparable to the Rambot articles on English Wikipedia (I take Rambot as a precedent on what should be allowed on young projects and what not). I see no use in deleting these articles. The series on French communes (example vo:Alleyrac) seems to be of lesser quality. They are very short and provide few information.

So, my proposal would be to review these series and delete those which are of lesser quality and keep those, which are of better quality. The second point of my proposal is: SmeiraBot (or other accounts driven by Smeira) should not be allowed to create new series of bot-created articles without community approval. If he wants to re-insert articles on French communes (assumed they will be deleted through point 1 of my proposal) he has to detail his insertion plans on an extra community page on the Volapük Wikipedia and the community reviews it. He should provide articles out of the series as example and give details on the facts that will be included in the articles and what the sources are for those facts. By this there should be no danger of errors sneaking in (like it was reported about the earlier bot articles). As an extensiveness threshold I would propose the Rambot articles as a precedent. If there is an amount of information covered in the articles that is comparable to original Rambot (example [5]) the bot-run should be approved (I count [by rule of thumb] some 15 information bits in Rambot articles, like population, area, racial make-up, income etc.), if they are more like the stubs on French communes, they should not be approved and not inserted (in the example article vo:Alleyrac I count 4 information bits: area, population, geographic coordinates and info on where the commune is situated [subnational entities]).

This should be a working measure to avoid poor quality articles. On the other side it won't avoid bot-articles and the proposal cannot avoid Volapük climbing to more than 100,000 articles again. Therefore the proposal won't satisfy bot article opponents. But I think it is a fair proposal and it is based on actual quality and not solely on the identity of the creator of the articles.

--::Slomox:: >< 13:34, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Slomox, your proposal sounds quite fair to me. Let me add that in the past several weeks, the work that has been done was actually transforming those articles with errors and the ones with very little information in better articles. Obviously, thousands of articles cannot be corrected in 1 month but slowly we were going in that direction. Malafaya 13:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: There's something that hasn't been mentioned here so far but in case some measure is adopted and articles are effectively deleted, care must be taken not to delete Volapük-related small/stub articles which don't have a widespread source anymore. Most articles about Volapükans are extracted from 19th century books and magazines which are not available to the general public anymore and thus are hard to reproduce. Malafaya 13:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You're turning things upside down. You (the Volapük Wikipedia people) created these huge mass of crap "articles" and now you ask for some more time to make them better??? You make me lough. Eeven en.wikipedia didn't manage to improve a large part of Rambot articles up to now. How many articles can you improve per day? Let us say 2, that makes 700 per year and person. Now take 10 persons working with this high intensity. How long does it take? But I fear you are living inside your own reality. Arnomane 15:57, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please {{be civil}} and don't say "crap" to disqualify (or I'm able to say that this is a fucking vote :/). 700 per year? It is a good amount for me! 555 16:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

An "article" that does not contain a single sentence is crap per definitionem and an admin that calls a person a vandal who properly asked for deleting a couple of such "articles" in vo.wikipedia simply does not deserve to be an admin. This very person Smeira is simply a vain person that seeks for attention and who simply hides his inability to write an encyclopedia behind cloudy words such as "community is a group of organisms [...] sharing a space and common interests". Pardon: A bacteria colony (on my laptop keyboard) is a Wikipedia community??? Probably a bot is part of a community, too according to Smeira. This shows that he simply is not interested in any useful debate but just in defending himself regardless if it makes sense or not. Arnomane 17:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Still, I see no usefulness in personal attacks in this discussion. Malafaya 17:53, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Still I'd like to talk on topic and like to get answers to my questions and points not some cloudy words and some meta debates on "personal attacks". A person that did something wrong did something wrong no chance to hide this with "no personal attacks" and I am not going to stop calling this person incorrigible until he agrees that this was wrong. Arnomane 18:01, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok then. Please, give me a pointer to a WMF rule or any other non-biased text that objectively states that what Smeira did is plainly wrong. And what was your question? Malafaya 18:04, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, first of all, FYI, I didn't create ANY of those articles and they are not crappy as they are the only online resource for Volapük history, so please mind your words or you may be actually labeled as discriminating. I don't even understand what you are trying to achieve. What kind of words are you reading from my comments?! I'm not asking for some time! I'm suggesting that this is not something to be voted for and some rules should be established before projects start being closed at random because some bunch of users wants. I don't need your pity. There are absolutely no RULES anywhere that state that ANY of the arguments you give for closure/erasure/whatever of the Volapük Wikipedia are reasons (some even not completely true) for closing a project. So why is all that arrogance? And I can tell you that if this proposal goes forth, I wouldn't like to be in the skin of whoever will have to "shutdown" the project and still let's see what the LangCom and WMF or whoever is responsible for the existence of these projects has to say about this "voting". And most of all, who are you to say that the work done by Rambot is a bad thing? Are you the Wikipedias' god or something? Are you owner of the unique truth? Stop being arrogant and keep the conversation at a good level. If I make you "laugh", that's your problem. If I live in my "own reality", that's my own problem. Please, just keep focused discussing this matter just like I'm trying to when I'm not interrupted by uncivilized and insultuous comments like yours. Malafaya 17:46, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First of all you yourself complained that I forgot to credit your contributions to Volapük Wikipedia. And now you complain that I made you responsible for these articles, too? You can't argue in both directions. Decide: Either - or. An above all: I never asked for closing Volapük Wikipedia. Think more, write less. Arnomane 18:07, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Again you're zig-zagging. Yes, I'm a contributor (as stated in my vote), and no, I didn't create the unique articles about Volapük history (as stated on my previous reply). Anything else you can't understand or you're just trying to have the ownership of the last post on this thread? Malafaya 18:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Slomox, your suggestion is quite sensible; I think it's a good point to start. Let me add a secondary suggestion: the shorter stubs could also be improved and made more informative (also by bots: as we talk, SmeiraBot is adding coordinate templates to the French stubs). If it is possible to make them as long and informative as, say, the Dutch or Portuguese bot-created stubs on the same cities (e.g.: nl:Buchères) -- and this shouldn't be too hard; I've been working on this problem in my spare time for a few weeks now -- would you agree that they could be retained, just as in the Rambot stubs case? Or do you think this would still not be sufficient? --Smeira 22:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane: I think you're losing your civility much too fast. Please consider that the people who are talking here may not share your views (not everybody thinks that bot-created stubs are evil), but not because they don't like you or don't appreciate your work in your own wikipedia. There are other viewpoints, there are other ways of thinking, there is no need to be offensive, to use words like "crap" and to repeat slogans as if they were God's truth. Please remember that your proposal did not mention "bot articles are evil" as the reason: you mentioned interwikis, people being upset, abuse of resources, etc. I made useful suggestions on each of these points. Reacting to them and proposing ideas -- like Slomox -- is much more constructive than getting angry.
A final comment: why do you accuse me of being vain and seeking attention, when you're the one setting up pages like this one, which attracts much more attention than anything I did myself? If you left vo.wp in peace, I don't think anybody would be talkng about me now. As I recall, the author of the first closure proposal (as Slomox so clearly shows, this is really the second closure proposal) also said s/he was sorry for the amount of attention the proposal had gotten -- if only it hadn't happened!... Smeira 22:02, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@ vo.WP

Granted that many people see a problem with the current status of vo.WP, how would your community wish to address these concerns? I understand that you must feel upset by how things began here, but may we please put that behind us and have a fresh start? Would your comminty aggree to follow either Llywrch's or Yekrats's suggestions?--BirgitteSB 21:18, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Birgitte, we are surely open to discuss these proposals like we have always been, had anyone started it in a conventional and peaceful way. I'm afraid though that so far it seems the supporters of this voting would not accept those suggestions or else they would have already stated that here. Let me reinforce the idea that most articles do not fit in the outlined alternate proposals so far. I still believe only a few thousand articles are small in size, contain 3 or less sentences while not being legitimate support or disambiguation pages. But in something I totally agree with you: no one is better suited to select articles than the Volapük community itself. Malafaya 22:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Even if it is not a large number of articles, the deletion by vo.WP of non-disambiguation pages with less than 3 sentances would be a very useful gesture. It would show that you are seriously considering the concerns raised here even if you cannot completely agree with some of the people voting "support". No one is really expecting everyone to agree 100% anyways. The goal is to simply find enough agreement that whatever differences remain are not significant enough to merit continued debate.--BirgitteSB 22:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. And indeed I have been saying that some suggestions here are worth discussing. Yet the proposer keeps the same radical position: deletion and Incubator, refusing any idea of compromise. Therefore, and as the voting apparently will continue to an "everything or nothing" result, I (and I speak for myself in this matter) haven't been expending a big effort in commenting or analyzing those compromise suggestions too much anymore (A much better suggestion would be giving us time to identify and make those less than 3 sentence articles at least 3 sentences long but apparently many people prefer "destroying" rather than "constructing"). Anyway, and let me give this a strong emphasis as no one seems to be bothered by it, is it actually fair that we are "obliged"/"suggested" to delete some articles when nowhere else that has actually been done? How many Wikis are there with the same kind of articles and they are left alone? Let's not say it's off-topic cause it's not. Same criteria IS to be applied everywhere: small communities, big communities, many articles, few articles. I don't think it's just or actually in any guidelines of WMF projects to discriminate a project in such fashion. If we are to delete 10K articles (still leaving vowiki above 100K, and still leaving the "interwiki problem" unsolved) because they are too small or because they were bot-created, shouldn't that be required in other projects as well? And let's not insist that quantity of such articles is the problem here. Either these articles, many or few, are a problem or they are not. Same criteria should be applied WM-wide. I'm sorry for making your life harder, Birgitte. I know you're trying to help. 82.154.217.253 01:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC) Malafaya[reply]

I just saw the outcome of the proposal to "cleanup" the Polish Wikipedia and I can't help commenting. How come a proposal like this can be applied to Volapük Wikipedia, generate all this fuss, having alternate actions proposed and yet, the same kind of request for the Polish Wikipedia (big Wikipedia, big community, natural language) was immediately considered as vandalism and closed? Where is it different in this sense? Is it because of its large community, who would make the proposal inviable? Is it because it's spoken by far more people than Volapük? How can it not be discrimination? It's very easy to check that Polish Wikipedia suffers of the same "problem" as Volapük Wikipedia in this sense: lots of "low-quality"/short stub articles. That proposal makes as much sense as this one for that matter. Yet, the proposal (as ridiculous as this one may seem, in my opinion) was "vandalism"?! Can anyone please explain what's the fundament for this? I'm afraid the WM projects are definitely becoming full of prejudice, and, as a contributor to some projects and a Wikimedia fan, I feel very sorry for that. Malafaya 02:03, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Malafaya, I think the 'support' people would claim that the differences you mention (big Wikipedia, big community, natural language) are sufficient to justify different treatment. I can see their point. The Polish Wikipedia, because of its larger community, has done a lot more good work than we have in the Volapük Wikipedia; if you filter out all the bad words and the bad karma, at least some of the supporters are simply concerned that we can't do as well as the Polish did. Maybe it still is discrimination; but I can see why people would be honestly and sincerely worried by the differences. (For example, some African languages, despite having relatively large numbers of speakers -- a few million --, still might have very few or no Wikipedians, just because these few million speakers have little or no access to the Internet. If one of these languages had a project like vo.wp, someone could express concern about the possibility that it would ever become good, and even though you could debate what standards these people use for their criticism ('good'? 'by what criteria?', etc.), you certainly wouldn't accuse them of being prejudiced against Black people or against African languages. Not necessarily.) --Smeira 12:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. I was referring to discrimination of a WM project in particular, not a race or language (although many hard comments here and on the previous closure proposal make is seem there is a discrimination by some users towards this language). 85.243.22.71 13:28, 29 December 2007 (UTC) Malafaya[reply]

@Birgitte: Thanks for your well-balanced approach! Let me give you my position: I understand that people here have expressed concerns (basically about whether or not bot-created articles are acceptable, and if so, how many are acceptable), but I would like to challenge this assumption: maybe they are acceptable if they contain information that is (a) useful (answers questions people might have about the topic), (b) relevant (is the kind of information you'd find in a standard reference work) and (c) correct (contains no errors). These are the criteria I suggest. What I am worried about is that the 'support' people don't address them, and I really don't understand why they prefer to repeat vague accusations about us "wanting to destroy the discussion" or "being against the very idea of an encyclopedia". Now, on Llywrch's and Yekrat's proposals: in principle I don't agree with them, because of my opinion on bot-created stubs and also because of the enormous amount of work we both and other users have already put into them, but if a majority of vo.wp users does agree (Malafaya seems inclined to agree; if another two people from vo.wp also think so, that would give you a majority), then I will of course follow the majority decision. But let me make a counter-proposal to both Llywrch's and Yekrat's: since both of them are concerned with the size and amount of information that the bot stubs have, would it satisfy them if someone (say, I) ran another bot to increase them, so that they look like the bot-created stubs from the Dutch and Portuguese Wikipedias (e.g. nl:Buchères)? This is not impossible, since it is exactly what happened in these Wikipedias. I could probably do that myself in a couple of months. --Smeira 12:26, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, Smeira. I'm sure we can add more info easily. And it's also a constructive approach. 85.243.22.71 13:28, 29 December 2007 (UTC) Malafaya[reply]

The Chaddy Case

Since Arnomane, in his/her beautiful, non-POV style, has criticized me for blocking Chaddy's account at vo.wiki, let me explain the case from my viewpoint. (Of course, this should be a vo.wp-internal affair; we should be discussing it on the vo.wp pub. But still, for the information of the wider public...) I'll try to avoid longer words and whatever Arnomane says is "cloudy" -- but s/he must promise to also behave in a civil way.

a. As Malafaya says: where are the rules I'm supposed to have broken? Are they cross-wiki? b. Chaddy opened a new page at vo.wp, and immediately proceeded to tag month stubs as "non-articles". S/he:

did not create a user page (despite having received our welcome on his talk page);
did not provide any information on him/herself and why he was doing that;
did not explain his/her actions on the corresponding talk pages;
did not initiate any discussions about when tagging is and is not indicated before moving to action (e.g. at the local pub: vo:Vükiped:Kafetar, where s/he never participated);
did not look around for a while to see how things are done, did not ask any advice or help on deciding for anything, and did not use other possibilities. (There is a category: vo:Klad:Pads koräkabik for articles that should be corrected. This is the first step, not immediate deletion.)
Because of the above behavior, I claim s/he was at least impolite and disrespectful of the community s/he apparently wanted to be a memer of.

Now, for the blocking: I agree that s/he should have been warned and told to behave properly, not blocked. S/he pointed this out on my talk page, and I have duly deblocked him/her. It is now up to him/her to show good intentions: there are lots of ways to contribute to vo.wp, it is simply a question of choosing one of them and doing some good work.

Now, the reason why s/he was immediately blocked was:
-- During the discussion for the closure of vo.wp, various vandals had tried to attack vo.wp. Several of them used the same method: tagging articles for immediate deletion. (See the section: "Vigilantes" in the closure proposal for documentation.) Like Chaddy, they had come in unasked, did not create userpages, did not ask anybody's advice, and immediately started tagging pages. Their behavior was so outrageous that User:Siebrand said he'd request steward assistance. Now, Chaddy's first changes followed the same behavior. If it is true that Chaddy only had good intentions and just wanted to help vo.wp grow and flourish, than I am indeed sorry: s/he was blocked only because of the bad behavior of some vandals from de.wp. Given their behavior, I think this was an understandable mistake. I will not make it again. --Smeira 21:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

lol Now, I have my own chapter... Have I really to inform the whole world and have I really to have a user page, when I want to propose an empty page for speedy deletion? The main difference between me and these vandals is that I listed an empty page for deletion. But the vandals wanted to delete articles. And by the way, how should I find e. g. vo:Klad:Pads koräkabik when I don´t understand this language? Chaddy 22:19, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, Chaddy, that problem exists in every Wiki where you don't speak the language :). I have that problem too in smaller wikis. I was also going to mention the possible reason for Chaddy's blocking but I see Smeira already answered. As in the previous voting, we are currently experiencing vandal attacks. I had to block 5 or 6 new accounts today for vandalism and therefore I could have made the same mistake as Smeira blocking Chaddy inadvertedly. Sorry, Chaddy. Malafaya 00:37, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Chaddy. You have a point: perhaps it's not necessary to create a user page if your only goal is to report a few pages for deletion. But why didn't you do it as an anonymous then? As for how to find out about categories: if you look at your talk page on vo.wp (vo:Gebanibespik:Chaddy), you'll see the little welcome template (with a translation into German). There, links to admins: vo:Geban:Smeira and vo:Geban:Malafaya are given, and you are requested to ask in case you had doubts. So the right thing to do is: go to any of us, point out the page in question, and ask what the usual procedure is. You could also go to the pub (vo:Vükiped:Kafetar) and ask questions there. That's how you would also find out about ongoing projects (the correction of mistakes in the geo stubs, the translation of articles in the List of articles here at Meta, and other such things). There are lots of ways in which you can help -- also by making suggestions, if you want. Just be polite, ask for help, and discuss. You'll soon know everything. (Also: you don't have to understand the language to work there, but it sure helps. If you want a link to a Volapük course, my recommendation is Volapük Vifik = Quick Volapük, by Ralph Midgley. There's a good dictionary Volapük-English (also by Ralph Midgley) Linglänapük-Volapük here. Good luck!) --Smeira 01:37, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I surely don´t want to learn Volapük. Chaddy 12:42, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then why do you want to be a Volapük Wikipedian? --Smeira 13:25, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To all supporters of this proposal

Dear all: let's please keep the discussion civil. Why start throwing words like "crap" and "junk" around, as if they had any meaning other than "I don't like it"? In the gmane discussion (see link on the talk page of this dicussion), words like "Mist" (=manure) and "Bytemüll" (= byte trash) are thrown around: does that make your opinion look more grounded and scientific? Why start throwing accusations around (Arnomane: "your attitude to imply I am a crazy harldliner and I hate minorities: I do definitely not". Nobody is claiming you do, Arnomane. You're just not answering my reactions to your rationale -- the proposed solutions to the "problems" you raise.)? Why make angry proposals on the spur of the moment (like the Polish Radical Cleanup proposal; Certh: now that the proposal was closed and will be archived, I think you've realized it was a bad idea)? Why not simply answer the arguments? I'll summarize here:

The cleanup proposal should be made at vo.wp, not at Meta. Support from vo.wp users for such a move is necessary (see the Lombard case).
The transference to incubator has technical problems and may be impossible (per MF-Warburg).
- Consequence: these problems seem to make this proposal technically equivalent to a second closure proposal; and closure was already discussed and rejected at Meta.
The problems mentioned in the rationale of the proposal have other solutions (see relevant section above).
The real reason for this proposal is anger about bot-created stubs. But they're not necessarily bad -- not even many of them. I think they can actually be good -- not wonderful, but just good. Many people who oppose this proposal clearly don't think they're necessarily bad -- in vo.wp or elsewhere. A discussion must be started on this topic before action is taken against specific Wikipedias.
BirgitteSB expressed concern about the nature of this proposal. Indeed, it can be used as a dangerous precedent for any groups who want to break wiki-autonomy to stage coups-d'état, or to impose outsider views on other communities. What do you think?

Please, let's talk about these things, and in a civil way. Arnomane: nobody is saying that you're a Volapük hater like Fossa. You're an admin at de.wp, and you've done good work there. I have nothing personal against you; nobody here has. In your 2006 election page, you mention Astronomie and Raumfahrt as two of your major interests; I happen to like these too. I am an amateur astronomer (I even once presented a paper on the evolution of G-class main-sequence stars in a students' Astronomy conference in Hokkaido, Japan, organized by the Japanese Association for Mathematical Sciences -- JAPS). I have written several articles on stars at vo.wp (see e.g. vo:Proxima Centauri, or the whole category: vo:Klad:Stels.). I repeat: there is no intention to suggest anything bad about anybody. Those who want to look bad -- like Fossa -- can do that by themselves, without my help.

A final note: the Polish Cleanup Proposal suggests that at least some of the supporters of this proposal (note I'm not saying you, Arnomane; I am saying: clearly Certh, and maybe others) don't know much about the WMF and its policies and principles, or about the procedures here at Meta. Wouldn't it have been better if you people had talked to the Meta administrators before starting this proposal? Or if you had asked a steward's opinion? (see what BrigitteSB had to say about the proposal above). Please note: I am not being ironical, I am not offensively accusing you all of not being good Wikipedians; I am merely mentioning that there are other things you could have done before starting this proposal. --Smeira 14:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To all opponents of this proposal. Can you please start writing shorter. Can you please stop trying to have the last word in every thread? Can you please stop making a denial of service to any useful debate with lots of page revisions and posing everything an encylopedia is about into question? Thanks for your cooperation. Arnomane 15:59, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To Arnomane. Since you ask questions and I would like to answer, it's inevitable that for now my post will be the last one (can I make it the one-but-last-one somehow?). I don't see why Smeira starting a new thread is being considered the "last word" because actually it's the first... but fine. Anyway, if it's to stop discussing this proposal, let's all just stop altogether but that would defeat the purpose of a voting such as this one, wouldn't it? I was basically resting from discussion already as I was waiting for any new development. As one doesn't happen, I would like to ask you what are we voting for at this point. Keeping it short, it has been shown that:

The project won't be moved "back" to the Incubator for technical reasons as MF-Warburg said above. It would have to be closed and started from scratch. As people already mentioned, that would be a 2nd proposal for closure in 1 month after the first has been rejected and, to say the least, it's not of good taste (if you make 100 proposals of closure will you eventually win one of them?) and may even be not a valid proposal (anyone/any steward can confirm this please?).
You being nominated sysop of the Volapük Wikipedia in these terms is a gross violation of a community's rights and a imposition of your own POV (what is a good article for you?) onto the local community, as GerardM mentions above.
That leaves us with the any other appropriate measure which so far you have missed to mention.

So, at this point, we are voting for any appropriate measure to radically cleanup the Volapük Wikipedia, which, in my opinion, sounds too vague to be taken seriously.

I believe I have a valid topic here. I'd like you to explain what's the next step on this proposal. What are we voting for at this moment? And if you do so, this post of mine won't have the "last word" in this thread. Thank you, Malafaya 16:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On the validity/legitimacy of this proposal

About "valid proposal": I don't know if there's any equal case to this, and I believe there is not. So you cannot say if this is a valid proposal or not, but since this actually is a second attempt to close vo:, it might be valid. We had also the deletion of Siberian Wikipedia, which followed the successful closing proposal, so, although this proposal is quite unusual (ungewöhnlich), IMHO it is valid unless a second attempt within such a short period of time is invalid. --MF-Warburg 16:35, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MF-Warburg, thanks for your comment. In case this is to be taken as a closure again, a new proposal (3rd) should be started from scratch mentioning explicitly the closure, don't you think? So far, all people voted according to the original rationale above which stated it does not include closure, but a deletion of articles and moving the "good articles" to Incubator. We can consider that some people who supported this proposal so far could have not supported it in case of a more extreme closure proposal. Malafaya 16:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MF-Warburg, BirgitteSB says this proposal is opposable because it violates the principles of WMF (violation of wiki-autonomy, since no attempt was made to discuss the topic with vo.wp; the reason given -- ultimately, too many bot-created stubs -- is not one of the principled reasons for outside interference in other projects; and a dangerous precedent is created). Would you think this is enough to make the proposal unacceptable? --Smeira 12:43, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe. There are many other proposals to close wikis. Do they violate the wiki-autonomy? No: There are wiki which have no content except spam or maybe two or three content pages in the wiki's language - there no autonomy is violated. These wikis are just crap, junk, rubbish, whatever. Therefore they should be closed (like ru-sib also had a community but was crap). Now some people think the Volapük Wikipedia is also crap, so in their opinion this proposal is acceptable. --MF-Warburg 14:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, some people (Certh) think that the Polish Wikipedia also contains lots of rubbish, crap, junk, whatever. In Certh's eyes, and probably others too, this should make Certh's proposal for a radical cleanup in the Polish Wikipedia acceptable. Yet it was immediately closed and archived. I suppose the difference is the number of people who have bad thoughts about the Volapük Wikipedia? Or is there something else? --Smeira 03:20, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The feasibility of moving vo.wp to the Incubator

For clarity (I thought this is obvious). I proposed moving vo.wikipedia to the incubator after all minor bot generated articles were deleted. I hope this adresses your worries. Furthermore on database access level sever admins can do much more than you'd imagine. It is just a MySQL database with very powerful possiblities of manipulation. Arnomane 17:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not really. I think you don't realize how many articles there will be after a "bot-generated minor articles" deletion and are just speculating. And who will do the task of selecting (criteria?) articles on a one-by-one basis? MF-Warburg didn't say anything about direct database manipulation. I believe that is not a standard procedure. And is it actually easy? MF-Warburg, could you please comment? Anyway, as MF-Warburg also said above, moving to Incubator is closing. Malafaya 17:44, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, let's get a few numbers. This should help us see if Arnomane's proposal is feasible. (And note: if Arnomane had started a discussion in vo.wp before coming here, s/he would have seen these numbers before and could have thought about them.) The articles/stubs that existed before I started uploading city stubs to vo.wp were: vo:Klad:Volapükans (about 1,450 members); vo:Klad:Volapükagaseds (about 50); vo:Klad:Volapükaklubs (about 250); vo:Klad:Läns (about 190), and a few minor ones I forget. There are also article/stubs created during the higher bot activity period, but which were human-created and have developed further; this includes: vo:Klad:Stels (about 8), vo:Klad:Dinosaurs (about 150 + another 5-10 in vo:Nims rujenavik which are not in the dinosaur category); there are also the articles in vo:Klad:Yegeds no pefipenöls (= articles to be improved; about 50) and in vo:Klad:Yegeds vipabik (= desirable articles, based on the List of articles from Meta; about 100). So: 1450 + 50 + 250 + 190 + 8 + 155 + 50 + 100 = 2250 more or less. (The vo:Klad:Telplänovapads has more than 2000, mostly also human-made, but since they're mostly disambiguation pages between city stubs that Arnomane would delete, I assume they would also be deleted as useless. They do, however, show how much work has been put into vo.wp already.) Since among the city stubs there are also many that were human-made, we could add, say, another 250 and get 2500. (Did I forget anything, Malafaya, HannesM?) So now we can ask MF-Warburg: is it feasible to transfer a project with about 2500 pages to the Incubator? --Smeira 20:41, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. It might not be reasonable (zumutbar) to do it via this process, but it's possible. But, about moving via the database: The tables incubatorwiki.page and vowiki.page (or however the databases are called) have to be joined. This can cause problems: 1) Every page on Incubator which belongs to a so-called test-language there has to be prefixed. If that is possible to prefix that pages in the database before joining the tables, there's still another thing: 2) The user pages (and maybe other namespaces) from vo: should not be moved. If it's possible just to join them to incubatorwiki.page, the last thing: 3) This will be a lot of work. I'm sure the developers have to do more important work than joining wikis. I'm sure incubator:I:Importing is possible, but I'm not sure at the database-method. But it's possible, 2500 pages are still OK, although it will take a lot of time. --MF-Warburg 21:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that settles this question. Thanks, MF-Warburg! --Smeira 03:52, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, most of the "desired articles" are of enough good quality, I believe. But anyway we are talking of some 100 pages. And what about the American cities pages? They are not stubs, just bot generated and many actually edited by humans after that. Won't they be included? Malafaya 13:37, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now, two different questions to MF-Warburg: you mention that, though feasible, moving the reduced vo.wp to the incubator would be a difficult task and take a lot time away from project developers who have better things to do than matching tables. In your opinion, is this sufficient reason to make moving vo.wp to the Incubator a bad idea -- rather than leaving it where it is (reduced or not)? Now, another question: suppose the (reduced) Volapük Wikipedia is moved to the Incubator. What are the criteria for deciding when a project can leave the Incubator? And could it be that the (reduced) Volapük Wikipedia already satisfies these criteria and would then be immediately moved out after being moved in (thus generating yet more work for the developers)? --Smeira 12:40, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A project leaves Incubator when it has been approved by the Langcom after a successful request, which requires a translated interface, an ISO code, a good test project (on Incubator) and contributors (native speakers). Since Volapük Wikipedia meets all this criteria, it would be useless to move it to Incubator. But if this were done, you could make a request for a "new" vo.wp, which the langcom could REJECT because Volapük has no native speakers, but this is confusing with invented languages. About "bad idea": It is a bad idea to move so many pages. --MF-Warburg 14:02, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Probably ang:, cu:, got:, ia:, ie:, io:, jbo: and nov: Wikipedia have no native speakers either (there could be others too). And there isn't native speakers for the other wikis of these languages either (Ido Wiktionary has more articles than vo.wikipedia).

The prospect of having to import all the other wikis with no native speakers to the Incubator could make even the most dedicated Incubator editor lose interest in further work on that very useful project. The chances that there will ever be (enough) users that have those languages as their first language are slim, and the chance that the wikis will be forever stuck in Incubator is large. --Jorunn 15:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All those arguments make the move-to-incubator look like a bad idea already. Also, if Malafaya is right and the American city stubs would be deemed (even by Arnomane) as 'good enough' to be kept, then there would be another 20 000 pages to move to the Incubator -- this would probably make it technically impossible again. So: do we all agree now that the "move-to-incubator" part of the proposal must be dropped? --Smeira 03:25, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A parallel discussion

During the night, User:Leptictidium and I have had an interesting exchange of ideas about this proposal and various claims made on it. Since it was quite lengthy, it seemed better to leave it where it was (our talk pages) rather than tranfer it here. If you're interested, look at my talk page first for Leptictidium's comments, and then at Leptictidium's talk page for my reactions. --Smeira 03:52, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for destryoing this debate and then noticing that it is too long and then starting in parallel. Arnomane 11:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The exchange outside of this page was Leptictidium's idea, not mine; s/he was the first to write something on my talk page. You should thank him/her, if there's anything to thank for. And I am merely posting a link to it for anyone who's interested in arguments; how does that destroy the debate? --Smeira 11:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You noticed that this discussion here is too long and you suggested that this parallel discussion maybe is better because this here is overcrowded. You wrote the most text here. But probably you asking now the next question how I can get this impression (as usual). Arnomane 13:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane; please notice that I (supporter of the proposal) and Smeira (against the proposal) were just discussing our own points of view on all this, and not actually starting a new discussion. I think Smeira only linked to it because he thought it might be interesting for some people to have a look at how we evaluated some of the arguments used in here, both for and against the proposal. -- Leptictidium 14:20, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for not beeing clear enough. I didn't want to critise anybody but Smeira with that. Arnomane 20:37, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, since Leptictidium began the conversation and was the one who suggested moving it all here (I suggested the links instead), your apology doesn't sound very logical. The 'parallel discussion', as you call it, has two sides. If you criticize me for answering, you must also criticize Leptictidium for asking. --Smeira 03:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On a more constructive level: I really like your summary and I haven't answered to quite some comments here, cause I think it is not good if I try to find every answer on my own and I am convinced there are people that are smarter than me. ;-) Arnomane 01:10, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Also on a constructive level: don't forget to look at my answers. Also notice how they affected Leptictidium's points; and check also my own second reaction to his modified points. I agree Leptictidium is doing a good job; that's exactly what I was asking you (or anyone else) to do. It improves the level of the debate tremendously. --Smeira 03:32, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

@Arnomane: it's obvious how you got your impression: I am indeed one of the major contributors to this debate, my comments have indeed increased the size of the page a lot. It's a true impression. What I don't understand is how this destroys the debate. Other people seem to be able to follow what I say and react accordingly; you claim you can't, because "the page is too long". I've already offered to help you with anything that you find difficult to follow -- I can even explain it on your talk page if you don't want to make this page even longer. What else can I say? --Smeira 12:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, your unnecessary rudeness is destructive. Someone trying to save your work isn't. 555 14:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New external link: position on bot articles

In Arnomane's blog, I have given a clear definition of my position with respect to bot-stubs, whether they are good or bad, and I've also answered some criticisms of my position and some misunderstandings. Since such criticisms play an important role in the discussion here, I thought they would be relevant, but I didn't see where to put them here, so I decided to just put the link here for those who are interested: [[6]] (scroll down to the fourth (currently the last) post). DISCLAIMER: No, I'm not trying to destroy this discussion (how could I?), I'm not starting a parallel discussion (it's Arnomane's blog, not mine), I'm not suggesting that we all go discuss over there (why would I do that? just check what I wrote there if you're interested, then come back and continue debating on this page). --Smeira 21:24, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Two questions

I have two questions. - Hillgentleman 17:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Accuracy of the articles

This question is to S. Meira: 1. How can you guarentee the accuracy of the information in the thousands of stubs? In particular, since the demoraphic data of any town are changing all the time, how do you keep them up to date? - Hillgentleman 17:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Hillgentleman. Fair question. There are two major sources of error: (a) miscopying by the bot (because e.g. the source did not always follow the standard format the bot supposed it would), and (b) errors in the sources themselves, which are mostly pages in other Wikipedias.

(a). Copying errors tend to fall into a small number of classes. For instance: when an expected word or field marker is not found (maybe it was vandalized, maybe this item has an odd format), then the variable that locates it gets a default value of -1. When used as a pointer to where the information is that should be copied, this tends to be interpreted as the beginning of the article. In consequence, a large chunck of the article (from its beginning to the point where the actual information should have been) is mistakenly copied. About 200-300 US settlement pages had this kind of mistake. They can usually be found (i) at the list of long pages: any city stub with more than, say, 2000 bytes is a probable copying error; and (ii) at the list of wanted categories, in which any red categories with non-Volapük names were probably part of the text mistakenly copied. If you look at both pages through time, you'll see that we have been steadily correcting them, at a rate of about 4-10 per day. I estimate that they should all be accurate in another three or four months (if we aren't distracted by other proposals like this one, of course). There are also other kinds of mistakes which we have been looking at, but this is not the place to give a full inventory; suffice it to say that we have created categories (vo:Klad:Pads koräkabik = pages to correct; vo:Klad:Pads ba dotiks = doubtful pages; vo:Klad:Pads koräkami nedöls = pages in need of corrections; vo:Klad:Pads Lamerikänik nen koordinats = US pages without coordinates; etc. etc.) to deal with them. These classes have also been steadily decreasing in size, as we deal with their specific problems.

(b). As with any encyclopedia, inaccuracies in the sources are usually transferred into the encyclopedia itself: an encyclopedia can usually not be more accurate than its sources (or else it must engage in original research). I assume lots of errors already present in de.wp, en.wp, fr.wp, ro.wp, it.wp etc. were transfered to vo.wp and remain there. The simplest way to deal with them would be to do a periodic check of these sources (say, once a year): has there been any changes in the original Wikipedia? If so, transfer the new information to the corresponding vo.wp page. (The same, by the way, is to be done when updates are available. I assume there will be new population statistics figure for US cities after the 2010 census; we could then either transfer them to vo.wp as soon as they're available on the US Census website, or wait for en.wp to process the new information and transfer it from en.wp, whatever is simpler and safer.)

I also wanted to point out that, in checking for errors and inaccuracies, we have often been able to help other Wikipedias. Among the Rambot US City stubs, many of those who caused transference errors to vo.wp had actually been vandalized -- not in a very obvious way, but by e.g. deleting a few sentences inside the "Demographics" paragraph. In many cases, I was the first person to revert the edits and recover the original data. --Smeira 18:09, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What is wikipedia?

2. Folks, What is wikipedia? What is it for? In this context, what do you mean when you say something is good or bad for wikipedia? - Hillgentleman 17:25, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Biig question. You could write a book about it. I will make a smaller claim here: the goal of a Wikipedia project cannot be always the same, not under present conditions. The smaller projects (say, the last 100 in the List of Wikipedias) simply would never the manpower to be the same kind of enciclopedia that en.wp, de.wp and fr.wp aspire to be. If these projects are to be kept, their goal must be different from that of the largest projects. --83.85.142.49 18:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC) -- Sorry, that was me. --Smeira 23:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts

I have been considering the Volapük situation on and off for quite some time, and I have a few thoughts now. Just to be clear, I do not think it is within my rights to make any sort of declaration about this, and so my comments should be considered merely those of someone who has been around for a long time here and thought about a lot of different aspects of these kinds of issues, considered both from the perspective of local users of a language project as well as from the perspective of the good of the project as a whole.

My first thought is: what is the purpose of Volapük Wikipedia?

According to English Wikipedia, there are around 20 or 30 speakers of this constructed language worldwide. I think this is an important fact which ought to inform our thinking about how such a project should best be managed. Therefore, no one needs this encyclopedia in order to have a free encyclopedia "in their own language"... our fundamental mission. If we were discussing a language with 300 million speakers and virtually no articles in Wikipedia, I think we might tend to be quite tolerant of bot-generated articles as a way to "kick start" the project... i.e. to make a big bunch of articles to draw the attention and interest of speakers of that language who might help make a real project of it.

In this case, though, there are no speakers who need this in order to learn about the world. There is no one who can only understand Volapük. Indeed, I would venture to guess that all existing Volapük users are fluent in either English or German... or, often, both. So if these people need to know about Cleveland, Ohio, they will likely use English Wikipedia or German Wikipedia or another Wikipedia... the Wikipedia of their mother tongue.

Does that mean that Volapük Wikipedia has no purpose, or that it is worthless? I do not think so. If those 20-30 people, or any 5-10 of them, take an interest in the language and would be interested in working on a Wikipedia in that language, then I think that's a fine project. But why? Why would they want to do this? Likely for the sheer joy of creating in the language, of sharing a hobby with friends, etc. And I would argue, then, that bot-generated articles actually detract from that mission, the mission of learning the language, the mission of having fun with friends building new articles in the language.

Therefore, I would recommend that we recognize that the primary purpose of Volapük Wikipedia is not the abstract "reader" who we concern ourselves with in most languages, but rather the primary purpose is to serve the needs of "writers"... learners of the language.

My recommendation, then, is that all the bot-generated articles be deleted, and that Volapük Wikipedia authors proudly and with joy work to create articles in the old-fashioned human way... helping each other with grammar, with interesting langauge questions, and with content that is of interest to the users.

And I see no particular reason to move Volapük Wikipedia to the incubator, although I would like to stress here that I am not taking a position that it should not move there either. I just don't see it as a big point either way.

To be transparent about a possible personal bias of mine: I often use our lists of wikipedias ranked by article count in public lectures. I do not think it is valid for me to include Volapük or any other primarily-bot-written constructed-language wikipedia in those listings. And so I support, whatever else might be decided here, that Volapük Wikipedia be barred from those lists so long as it exists primarily as bot-generated articles.

I hope that my thoughts here are useful to someone, and I wish everyone well.--Jimbo Wales 01:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree with you, I voted against the current proposal because only the vo community must decide that. I am not part of that. I personally, if I was a wikipedia's sysop or something, would not create so many stubs by bot. Well, maybe some. :) But they decided to do that for their reasons. Let's just take off vo from certain lists and statistics and it won't hurt anyone.

Osias 12:39, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am 100% for the souvereignty of Wikipedias if they don't leave the common ground and if they do care themselves efficiently about their problems. There were several attempts to convince these people stopping their action and deleting the most pointless bot articles ASAP but with no sucess (even the opposite "outsiders" were blocked as vandals or were simply ignored). So vo.wp lost the right to act independent cause they are abusing the Wikipedia brand which was created by all other Wikipedias with hard work. So if the vo.wp people (mainly Smeira) finally wake up, delete these articles themselves (~90% of all vo.wp articles) and don't just spread weak excuses like "give us two years time for quality improvements of these articles" I will be very happy cause I would have reached more than just my proposal. However as it is now (also compare Smeira's lenghty comment) I see no chance other than doing their job for them.

However I also was a bit naive to ask for "adminship rights or any other appropriate measure" cause people always only read the first thing and not the second and always think the worst, namely that I am a German exclusionist of the worst kind which I am not (actually I am an inclusionist as long as the articles meet a minimum quality standard and fight for this position in de.wikipedia).

I am not keen on admin rights in vo.wp. I just wanted to avoid some result and then afterwards nobody actually cares about its realisation (this happened to often in the past with other things). So if you have some effective proposal how to get rid of this huge mass of pointless articles other than asking the vo.wp community I'd be very happy if you can share it here. Arnomane 17:45, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Arnomane! Again, why are you evading the discussion? Why do you always seem to imply: "I'm right, you're wrong, and if you don't agree you're bad"? Look, the 'several attempts' at convincing us you talk about were actually simple edits: Achates added an interwiki link (with a provocative edit comment), and Chaddy tagged five pages for deletion. Because of experience with vandalism from de.wp, I reverted Achates' edit and blocked the second account (Chaddy's), but as soon as I realized that Achates' edit was OK I redid it myself, and when Chaddy finally explained himself, I deblocked his account. But did these two try to talk to us? None of you has ever made any attempt at talking to us. You never tried to convince us of anything. Why do you hide yourself behind wrong claims? This helps nobody... Since you didn't try anything, there is no reason to claim vo.wp has lost any rights. Is vo.wp abusing the Wikipedia brand? Is Wikipedia a trademark? Wow, can you give me a link that shows that?

I haven't given any excuses, Arnomane, and I haven't asked for any time on this proposal. I have imposed on myself (in the first closure proposal, which you clearly have read; but on this discussion I never mentioned it till now) a period of two years; if the vo.wp community doesn't develop further in this period, if I'm back where I started as the sole contributor and no hope of any improvement, I will myself submit another closure proposal and quit. I will do this, regardless of the result of this proposal or any others you may wish to start. I'm not a solipsist.

How about you? Have you answered any of the questions I raise? Have you considered any of the solutions I proposed to the "problems" you mention in the rationale? I can simply keep asking: why don't you? I've explained my position more than once; I did it even on your blog, but you keep ignoring it. You just repeat that I'm bad, this is all bad, very very bad, just bad; and if Smeira doesn't agree he's wrong, and he's bad too. Indeed, what a discussion...

But, Arnomane, I'm open to discussion. Should you want to talk to me -- really talk, trying to understand others rather than just 'do their job for them' -- I'm ready. But please don't be angry; there is no reason to be. Leave the accusations about "lengthy and cloudy words" aside. You're not a bad person. I'm not a bad person either. I'm not Dr. Goldfinger, and you're not James Bond :^). Maybe the mass of pointless articles you talk about is not so pointless. Or at least it means no harm for your work on de.wp, or anybody else's work on their wikis. Maybe they don't have to be deleted. Maybe there's something better to do with them. Will you be brave enough to talk to me about this possibility? --Smeira 23:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity. - From the bottom of en:Main_Page -- Leptictidium 00:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have been silent for a while in order to give other people a chance contributing their solutions undisturbed. I also didn't answer to you in every place cause I want to proceed and not to exchange the same old arguments over and over again. I am also not interested in any wild question session about everything under the sun, thus I'll skip answering that and will try to focus on the solution (beside others already answered them).

I never said that I am the good "Mr. Bond" and you are the evil "Mr. Goldfinger". If you'd read my proposal more open minded you'd see that I am an opponent of black-white-schemes. I don't want to destroy your hard manual work I don't want to destroy vo.wp. I just want to stop and undo a certain action that harms every Wikipedia and especially the vo.wp. Creating lots of bots articles means to take out a loan on the future of your community. You enforced a huge TODO list on your tiny community with that bot. Who wants to work on huge TODO lists in his spare time? None. People want to have fun at writing and this is anything but a well defined TODO list.

The reason why I am strictly against "please let us time sorting it out internally"-proposals is that you simply don't have the slightest clue about the size of this task. Even the biggest Wikipedia the en.wikipedia failed to improve a significant part of Rambot articles. And of course Rambot just created around a third compared to your bot! So you simply have no chance improving the current vo.wp significantly. You simply don't have the power. Know your power, don't overestimate it, or you will be burned out quick!

I don't want to fight against you and I don't think that I am your enemy. Sometimes a friend has to say very harsh words in order to help his friend. My proposal is about supporting you (beside improving my personal Wikipedia experience). There is no other way saving the vo.wp community than deleting ~90% of vo.wp's bot articles. How it is done is up to you. Arnomane 12:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, thank you for explaining your thoughts; it cleared a couple of little misunderstandings I had. So you say: creating lots of bot-stubs is bad because it imposes too much future work on the community. Because bot-stubs have to be developed into good articles, and that takes time (as you said, en.wp hasn't done that yet with most of the Rambot articles). You say we have no idea of how big the task is.

Now, I have a quite good idea of how big the task is. In fact, if "improving" means humans changing manually each article till it becomes at least half-good, I would say: this task is impossible. Many stubs will be improved by people (I hope), but most of them probably never will. On vo.wp, and also on en.wp, and on nl.wp, and everywhere where they were and are used, many bot-stubs will probably remain "unimproved by people" forever. Is this bad? I don't think so, because:
(a) Articles can also be improved by bots; this has happened in the Rambot case, and elsewhere. After my counter-proposal to BirgitteSB, I've been working on the question myself; I think it will be possible to change, e.g., the French city stubs from, say, vo:Ambérieu-en-Bugey to something like this. Or perhaps even more. It would take a month, perhaps less time (if I could concentrate only on it). But maybe you think this is not good enough, because it still would be "repetitive" (same text), "not human", "non-creative", etc. So then, the other reason:
(b) Stubs are not bad. They don't have to be improved in order to exist. Each and every one of the stubs in all Wikipedias (bot-created or not: it makes no difference), even if it remains unimproved, makes Wikipedia a little bit better than it would be without it. Just a little bit, and human contributons are usually much better; but still, every tiny bit is a contribution.
SO: I don't think these stubs are too much for the vo.wp community, because the idea is that (a) they can be further improved (by humans or bots), and (b) even if not improved, they play a role. They show 'boring' encyclopedic information -- statistics, location -- that people would be better off not worrying about. So vo.wp people can concentrate on articles like vo:Opabinia, or vo:Rumän, or vo:Milan Kundera, or vo:matemat, etc.

I believe you when you say you mean well. OK. But people who mean well don't always do the best thing. You think bot stubs are bad (too much work for the community, etc.). I don't. I think they contribute something. They add a little bit of useful information and they don't harm anybody. If you had asked the vo.wp community first, you would have heard all that; and we could have done the right thing: discuss between us what bot-created stubs are, if they're bad or not. You see, many people agree with you, but many don't; just look at the comments near the votes. (Eukesh especially has done a lot of thinking about that.) It's not an obvious thing, unlike copyright violations; we need to discuss it. Perhaps even at a higher level, not simply here for vo.wp, but for all short stubs (bot-created or not) everywhere. --Smeira 23:59, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This hard line keep all position is not the way to go. I thought that you are able for a compromise, but sadly I have learned that you are not. Whatever I tell you: All you can do is just denying it. No acknowledgement from your side that something big has to be done now within the next two months. See also my last points below on language culture. And don't tell me that a bot Wikipedia does not harm its language. Arnomane 01:52, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(resetting indent) But, Arnomane, I don't agree with you. And you're not trying to prove that you're right (to convince me); you're just repeating that I must compromise. To me, this is like saying: either you agree with me, or you're wrong. Either "something has to happen in the next two months" or there is no debate. If I can't discuss the question of bot-created stubs: are they good or bad, then what kind of discussion is this? You "learn" that I "can't compromise", and I "learn" that you can't "talk about bot-created stubs". Is this the way to go in a debate? I don't think so. If bot-created stubs are not bad, then nothing has to happen. And I repeat: many people who voted on this page seem to agree with me. Doesn't our oppinion deserve to be discussed? As for bot-created stubs and language, see below. --83.85.142.49 09:49, 5 January 2008 (UTC) --Smeira 09:52, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are quite some rubish articles in vo.wp. Articles that either don't contain a full sentence, just an HTML (!) table or that simply contain byte rubbish, cause the bot went crazy. You even refuse to delete those "articles". If you'd start and delete such worst kind bot articles now, we certainly would find some middle ground. Arnomane 10:27, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are articles with copying errors (I mentioned how to find them in my answer to Hillgentleman on how to keep them accurate); they are being corrected. Can you show me any articles in vo.wp that don't contain a full sentence, or simple byte rubbish? Aside from some very old human-created articles -- created before my first edit there -- like the month articles that Chaddy tagged, I don't see any. But if there are any, let us know, and we'll correct them. It's better to correct an article than to delete it, if it can be done, don't you agree? (For instance: I had pointed out that de:O'Fallon (Illinois) was a bot-like stub, even though it was created by a human. Liesel went on and improved it, by adding a summary of the history of that place. So now de.wp is slightly better than it was before. Wasn't this better than simply deleting that stub? Other similar stubs (with 5 or fewer sentences) in de.wp, that I suggest be improved, not deleted: de:Streator, de:Carlinville (Illinois), de:Ottawa (Illinois), de:El Monte, de:Canyon Lake (Kalifornien), de:Õru (I've gone ahead and corrected a small mistake there: a comma that should have been a period), and thousands of others. --Smeira 11:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@Jimbo Wales, for the sheer joy of creating in the language, of sharing a hobby with friends, etc. And I would argue, then, that bot-generated articles actually detract from that mission, the mission of learning the language, the mission of having fun with friends building new articles in the language. This is a nice thought. I have a question. How many of the wikipedians start out creating a brand new article in their very first edit? --Hillgentleman 01:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion criteria

Here is a technical/policy point: In general, articles on wikipedia are deleted according to the policies, which have been created in line with the wikimedia mission and implement the specifics of the five pillars and the foundation issues.
Articles can be proposed for deletion if their topics are out of the scope of wikipedia, if they contain libelious or illegal materials, or (in some wikipedia) even if they contain inaccurate information, ….
Now I have a question.
Which particular criteria and policies are we using for the deletion of the articles in the Vukiped? -Hillgentleman 01:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good question, Hillgentleman. Up until now the community had simply not discussed any criteria for deleting an article -- other than, tacitly, the ones that you mentionedc above: libelious or illegal materials, out of scope of a Wikipedia (but the scope hasn't been defined for vo.wp either). It is a question that should be discussed; I'll start in in the pub, right next to your questions about the Main Page.

What I can say now is what I've been doing, more or less intuitively. For instance, when I imported American city, town and village stubs, it turned out that some of them referred to ghost towns. Since the original idea was to transfer only really existing settlements (and the ghost towns were, in my opinion, incorrectly classified in en.wp to start with, together with other existing settlements), I deleted them when I found them. Of course, one could argue that ghost towns are an encyclopedic topic, and should simply be placed in a different category. Fair point. I was simply thinking: this is not what I wanted to import, let's delete it (in the future ghost towns might be a target too, but they weren't then), but there are other logical viewpoints. If the community agrees, we could bring them back.
Another example: a German contributor to vo.wp, User:Zifs, has deleted a few pages on German Gemeinde and replaced them with redirects. When I looked up the corresponding de.wp pages, it turned out these Gemeinde had been incorporated into another one (so Mehringen and Drohndorf became, on Jan 1, 2008, parts of the Gemeinde Aschersleben). Since the idea had been to transfer Gemeinde, not Stadtteile (city districts, which is what Mehringen and Drohndorf now have become), I agreed with the deletions + redirects to Aschersleben and maintained them.

Therefore, you might say the criteria are: get articles that exist in other Wikipedias (except for most articles on Volapükists, which exist only in vo.wp; e.g. vo:Marie Johanna Verbrugh), and delete articles that don't fall into the categories that had been targeted. Then get another target category (e.g. the List of articles that every Wikipedia should have, which we're now targetting; see vo:Klad:Yegeds vipabik, which contains them) and do the same. These are of course only intuitive criteria, and actually a bit illogical, now that I think about them. As I said, I'll start the discussion in vo.wp. --Smeira 12:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While this is not a subject I have strong feelings concerning, only on principal I oppose deletion. It seems that this is certainly newsworthy. I definately saw articles created with less merit. 99.141.71.51 18:25, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear anonymous user: please note this is a discussion about a whole project, not about a single article. You also need to identify yourself (by creating an account at Meta with a link to your account in your main Wikipedia) in case you want to vote. --Smeira 12:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on your thoughts on Volapük

Thank you very much for your comments, Jimbo Wales. You raise important questions and concerns; other participants had raised them before, and I believe there are important answers that you probably need to be aware of, in order to think further about the issue and decide for yourself. I will try to quickly sketch them here (and then I'll copy and paste this on the cleanup discussion page for those who are there).

What is the purpose of the Volapük Wikipedia?

Excellent question. To me, this question should be broadened to: what is the purpose of any 'small' Wikipedia? There are other Wikipedias that don't have any real native speakers (Latin, Old English, Ancient Greek -- the latter in the Incubator), there are Wikipedias with very few active contributors (the last 100 in the List of Wikipedias probably fall in this category), there are Wikipedias in languages with very few speakers, sometimes as few as Volapük (cf. Hawaiian, Inupiaq). It is true that all Volapük speakers can speak and read other languages (in fact, Volapük is never their best language!). But this is true for many other cases. All dialectal Wikipedias (Nnapulitano, Zeeuws, Võro) have contributors who also speak their standard languages (Italian, Dutch, Estonian) and could use/contribute to the corresponding Wikipedias. All speakers of other constructed languages (Esperanto, Ido, Novial...) can also speak other languages at native level and could use/contribute to the corresponding Wikipedias. All speakers of Catalan also speak Spanish; all speakers of Dutch (where I can speak from personal experience) and, apparently, also of the Scandinavian languages, can speak excellent English, and could use/contribute to the English Wikipedia (many of them do, actually). As you said about Volapük, they don't need their specific projects to learn about the world. They can do that with other projects.

So: Do these projects have a point? What is their goal? As you see, it's not simply a Volapük question. It's actually a question for every Wikipedia in a language for which there is no significant population of monolingual speakers who only have that language as a means to explore the world of ideas. And there already are dozens of such Wikipedias, from Latin to Lombard to Zeeuws to Esperanto to Old English to Volapük to Võro to Hawaiian to Nnapulitano to Limburgish to... What is their purpose? To me: they should define it for themselves. Why? Because the stated purpose of Wikipedia as a project -- the creation of a great free Encyclopedia, a repository of all of human knowledges -- is not attainable to most of them. User communities would have to get to (I guess) at least a hundred dedicated active contributors before a full encyclopedia became a plausible goal. Even with the hundreds of thousands of contributors in en.wp, it took years! So: The goal of these small communities MUST BE DIFFERENT. It cannot be the same as the goal of larger projects like en.wp or de.wp. If this goal -- the creation of a comprehensive encyclopedia, an no other -- is the only acceptable one, then I'm afraid half, probably more than half of the projects in the List of Wikipedias should be closed as soon as possible. Is that so? Aren't there other reasons for Wikipedias to exist?

As you point out in your comments: there is the joy of those who want to create (and use) the resulting Wikipedias! I will use your own words: let the contributors of all those Wikipedias proudly and with joy create articles! For what purpose? For an all-encompassing encyclopedia? Well, no. Maybe for somethign else, for documentation of their cultures, or any other topics they thought interesting... what the goals could be is an interesting question, and I'd love to hear what other small communities (say, 20 active contributors or less) think about that.

In the old-fashioned human way?... Yes, of course. But what if they decide that they also want to do it in other ways? Should this be their decision, or should this be a general decision, to be taken at the inter-Wikipedia level? This is ultimately a question about general policy. It has thus far been the case that every project was awarded as much freedom as possible. That means deciding by themselves what could be good and bad -- even if it involves, say, creating huge amounts of bot-stubs. If these projects should however all have the same goal -- a comprehensive encyclopedia with preferably featured-article-quality contributions -- then perhaps there should be stronger guidelines that prevent other kinds of ideas from getting started. I suggest that this be made a discussion at a higher level. (Do you happen to know what I would have to do to start such a discussion?)

The decision of creating bot-articles was a hard one. I was responsible for it; nobody else on vo.wp should be blamed for this one decision. I maintain that there are good reasons for doing that (beginning with "completeness-of-coverage" and "it's-at-least-a-useful-something", but going further into other aspects of the question); but this is a different question maybe. (By itself, the question of the usefulness of bot-articles should probably be also discussed at a higher level, independent of the specifics of each project. Again, do you happen to know what I would have to do to bring this topic up for general discussion?). Here, since you mention the actual joy of creating articles, I will mention only one more: these languages have speakers who like them, who want to use them. (That's why they're not working mostly on the other wiki's whose language they know well, by the way.) They had never had much for themselves, because their communities are small. Even dead languages like Latin were loved by those who liked its past, not its present: Academics, students, lovers of history... Even a collection of simple stubs -- a "phone directory", as someone once described to me -- is more than the speakers of these languages ever had. (Of course not for Dutch of for the Scandaniavian languages, or for Esperanto, or arguably for Latin; the others, however, really never did.) It's a leap forward in terms of the amount of information available in the languages they love and prefer to use. Isn't that worth something?

But how about the other projects? Aren't they harmed by it? As far as I can see, they are not. There is no big waste of resources, there is no lack of storage space for them, there is no reduction in access time due to vo.wp, nothing I can see. The interwiki question, which is always mentioned, looks like a pretext, since it can be easily solved within each project. (Or perhaps by a general discussion about the uses of interwiki links. But anyway without forcing any project to close or delete articles...)

The only good arguments I've heard in this area are the ones about 'how fair it is' for Volapük to be so high on the table -- when projects with more contributors working hard have fewer pages? No, because I don't think the number of articles judges how good a project is. Is anybody judging a project by how many pictures they've uploaded? No, since Commons made this number immaterial: any project has now 2,000,000+ pictures and media files at their disposition at the moment of its creation. I think the parameter used at the List of Wikipedias -- number of articles -- is simply wrong. Jimbo, if you use it in presentations and talks without mentioning that it is a very, very poor parameter, then you're making an important mistake. It is not! Consider the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles: it has a better parameter (which has problems itself, some of which are pointed out on its talk page) and would probably be better. The Hebrew Wikipedia is, in my opinion, better than the Romanian Wikipedia, and at least as good as the Vietnamese Wikipedia; yet it is ranked lower only because it has fewer articles. This ranking is as misleading as it is for Volapük -- if you think that number of articles tells you much about the quality of a Wikipedia. Think of this: the English Wikipedia has now 2,100,000+ articles. A naive reader of the List of Wikipedias could think they are all excellent, FA-quality articles, or at least good articles; but that is not the case. In fact, if there are fewer than 100,000 FA-quality articles, even the number of good articles (say, A- or B-class) can't be very big. I'll guess (correct me if I'm wrong) that about half of these 2,100,000+ articles are of substandard quality (in that they wouldn't be accepted for a paper encyclopedia). So if this number -- 2,100,000+ -- is mentioned without qualifications (for PR reasons, etc.), it is, frankly, as misleading as the 100,000 Volapük articles -- since it makes people want to deduce quality from it, which they shouldn't do.

(The real argument in favor of en.wp is, of course, than even 100,000 FA-quality articles are more than there has ever been in an encyclopedia; the 2-million number is not really necessary for someone to say that en.wp has already achieved far more than any other similar endeavor.)

So my thought on this: please use other criteria, and advertise them as well. I'm sure it would be good for WMF, and for public presentations of Wikipedia, if a different ranking, based on different criteria, was presented. This would be more scientific and more appropriate, and the viewers would be happy to see that some obvious problems with the original criterion -- number of articles -- had been addressed and tentatively solved.

I hope my thoughts don't sound offensive -- that wasn't the intention. And I hope you may find them useful. Thanks in advance! --Smeira 13:11, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Referring to small languages which cannot hope to create all-encompassing encyclopaedias, Smeira wrote: "what the goals could be is an interesting question, and I'd love to hear what other small communities (say, 20 active contributors or less) think about that." Here, then, are my two cents. I contribute, along with about three or four more active users, to the Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia. It has been created for the various Low Saxon (Low German) dialects spoken in the northeastern Netherlands, which taken together I will here call a language.

Although Low Saxon in the Netherlands may still have as many as several hundred thousands of speakers, it faces the double threat of being in precipitous decline among the youngest generations and of blending increasingly into Dutch (thus losing unique vocabulary, grammatical patterns and so on). A common view is still that speaking a dialect hampers one's command of Standard Dutch (sometimes called 'General Civilised Dutch'), and that it is therefore best not to hand down one's dialect to one's children. This logic is never compared to the normal and desired situation where children learn several foreign languages (dead or alive) in school and elsewhere alongside Dutch. Unlike English and Latin, Low Saxon dialects are often associated with being backward and boorish.

Although modern Low Saxon has had a literary tradition since the early nineteenth century, Low Saxon writing is for a large part bucolic and unpretentious, or it exudes an implicit recognition that the language is only fit to be used for informal and nostalgic ends. There is little linguistic self-esteem or emancipatory awareness among Low Saxon speakers. Outside literature, print media virtually don't carry Low Saxon, and it is also rare even on regional television and radio. In short, Low Saxon has a problem. But things are changing.

The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has provided a trailblazing emancipatory potential, and even with a tiny community some achievements are possible over time. Certainly nowhere else on the Internet has our language got comparable breathing space. It is a joy to write in it, to have it read, to form a community, to compare related dialects, to learn many new things, and to attempt to provide factual information in our own dialects on any topic - especially on regional topics that even the Dutch and English Wikipedias often overlook. Stimulating local languages helps disclose local information that larger languages not traditionally rooted in the environment would be hard-pressed to get to. At least for me, the goal of building a repository of knowledge is quite compatible with the effect of an emancipatory impulse for endangered languages. Hundreds of languages are set to die in the coming decades, and endangered languages are not found in jungles alone, but in the heart of supposely Enlightened societies.

As Smeira suggested, we could drop the effort to write and read (in this case) Low Saxon and turn instead to English or Dutch. But we are not robots whose sole drive is pragmatic efficiency and globalisation. We defend the aesthetics of languages, and the unique cultures and traditions they encompass and inform. Where yet another language dies, yet another culture dies.

In view of the existing Wikipedias for small or non-standardised languages, I take it that Wikimedia support the emancipation of marginalised languages. So long as this is compatible with the goal of creating encyclopaedic content, I can only see it as a felicitous meeting of good causes.

Ni'jluuseger 03:23, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Especially this sentence is really worth thinking about it:

We defend the aesthetics of languages, and the unique cultures and traditions they encompass and inform. Where yet another language dies, yet another culture dies.

I personally love my mother language (beside other languages). I like to express myself in German and I love to listen to German dialects cause they make people remarkable and give them a "Heimat" (~region/community where you can feel at home). That's why I emphasize it so much that a bot should never define my language and my texts. A bot cannot write aesthetically and unique (maybe in 200 years with AI). A bot written Wikipedia thus is a threat to that very language it is written in even if it is a constructed language like Volapük. That's also the reason why I didn't repeat the close request but requested for deleting all parts of Volapük Wikipedia that harm this Wikipedia, its community and language. Even if one might consider this strange: My proposal is a strong support for vo.wp (and maybe for some other small Wikipedias, too). Arnomane 13:21, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Arnomane. I don't see how a bot-created stub (if it is well-written, i.e. contains no errors of grammar or information) harms a language: it does not prevent people from improving it, it does not prevent people from writing longer articles about other topics. A bot cannot write beautiful texts, but standard texts do no harm a language. Also, how is a human-created bot different from a bot-created bot for a language? --83.85.142.49 09:49, 5 January 2008 (UTC) --Smeira 09:52, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Stop your question session now. Give answers, not questions! Thank you. Arnomane 10:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Look, you're the one who says bot-created stubs harm a language; you have to explain that. My answer is simple: no, they don't. Only people can harm a language (e.g. by not using it). The questions were an attempt at getting you to think about the question. --Smeira 11:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smeira you are just a small little boy that fears someone is taking his little bot toy away. I have answered several times to all your comments you did since my last contribution here. There is a fundamental difference: de.wp has the policy: If it cannot be improved within 7 days the article gets deleted. Period. de.wp actively improves articles and at the same time deletes articles which weren't improved in due time. Furthermore you are a way less smaller community that has no chance improving these articles in time and you refuse to delete anything and want to imporve everything. So do not just compare apple and pies. I am just sick of your attitude. I see no further point discussing with you. But now I will just take action against you in order to bring you back onto the table of compromise. Arnomane 11:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More pretty words from you, Arnomane? Why, what a nice guy you are!... A 7-day rule? So perhaps you can explain why a bot-like stub like de:Streator has been there for six months and has neither been improved nor deleted?... Such bot-like stubs in de.wp are so easy to find, I'm beginning to think you don't know your own backyard. Anyway, a 7-day rule may be good for de.wp, but nobody says it is good for all wp's. Most would probably agree that it is not. And you still, still haven't answered any of my questions, beginning with: why do bot-created stubs harm a language? Arnomane, you never discussed anything with me, or with anyone else, on this page. Your "new attitude" against me is not different from the old one. It's just your eternal attitude... --Smeira 16:22, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

50% Solution

I would like to make a proposal that does not target Volapuk specifically, but address some of the problems I see there, which I have also seen in the Lombard. You may ask: Why is there a problem with 100000 articles and 10-20 users? Answer: A small community simply cannot handle that number of articles. They cannot be checked for accuracy or neutrality. As Jimbo points out above, the falsely inflated numbers make all Wikipedias look bad.

Furthermore, Wikipedia is being misused. Wikipedia is not an advertising service for a language. It is not a tool to be abused by a political group or ideology. It is an encyclopedia. Although bots are useful, they must be controlled and not be allowed to go beyond what the community can handle. Bots are not bad. Overuse of bots is bad. Unless we put some reasonable limits on bot-usage, it seems that there is the tendency that some unscrupulous users will expand Wikipedias beyond the ability of the community to correct and deal with it. This has indeed already happened twice -- Volapuk and Lombard -- but Lombard has fixed their problem for the most part. In spite of that, I foresee other Wikipedias trying this, but that quick false numerical advantage comes with a price.

I would like to introduce the following new rule: At least 50% of the articles of a Wikipedia must be edited by a human. If any Wikipedia does not meet this minimum standard, then the WMF can forcibly prune it back. I'm not asking for adminship, but rather I'd like someone with authority from the WMF to do it, or give the Volapukists a reasonable ultimatum date so they can delete the articles themselves.

So, my thought is, you build 1000 articles by hand, your Wikipedia will have earned the right to upload 1000 articles by bot. You can patiently grow your Wikipeia, and by doing so, you earn the right to upload by bot. I've heard that Volapuk has about 5000 articles made by humans, so they would be entitled to keep 10000. I'm not set on the 50% number, and I think that number is up for debate. If we set the threshold at 25% of the articles must be made by humans, then Volapuk would be entitled to keep 20000. (~5000 human articles, 15000 bot articles). I think between 25%-50% for a "human article ratio" would be a fair proportion. By doing so, I think the Volapuk (and other Wikipedias) will be healthier.

Thoughts? I'd like to hear other opinions. -- Yekrats 23:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1. Yekrats, This borders on instruction creep. Anyhow, a more direct answer to your perceived problem too many articles for the community is to impose a global bound of the ratio NUMBEROFARTICLES/NUMBEROFUSERS.

2. Yekrats: " A small community simply cannot handle that number of articles. They cannot be checked for accuracy or neutrality. "

Neutrality : Now this is very interesting. First Arnomane declare the articles in question contain braindead information. Now you are afraid that they are not neutral.
Accuracy: This is a technical issue, for which there is already thread upstairs. Please continue the discussion above. Hillgentleman 02:47, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

One problem is defining a "edited by a human." I know of one wikipedia where thousands of cookie-cutter articles were built by a single human user, evidently with some external automated assistance. That user says the articles were not created with a bot, which is technically correct. However the effect on the wikipedia is broadly the same as if the articles were bot-created.--Jmb 06:23, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting example, Jmb. What kind of external assistance did he have? Did he have to enter them one by one, manually? --Smeira 11:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yekrats. I disagree with your main points:
(a) a small community can maintain lots of articles in standard format; this can be done by bot, as I suggested in my answer to Hillgentleman's question on how accuracy can be maintained. When the stubs have an appropriate format (say, the one I'm developing here), then it's simply a question of checking regularly to see if the statistics have been updated -- if there has been a new census, for instance -- and replace the old data with the new data. I think this is what is done in the other cases as well -- the Dutch, French, Polish and Italian Wikipedias. As for neutrality: if a standard text is written in a NPOV way, isn't that sufficient?
(b) I don't think Wikipedia is being misused, as long as the articles contain information that is (i) readable, (ii) accurate, and (iii) relevant (typical of a reference work like an encyclopedia). On encyclopedic grounds alone, the stubs are actually improvements (however slight) on the overall quality of the project. Also, no ideology (other than Wikipedia's own: free knowledge for all) is pursued. What happens is that a lot of articles gets you a higher position on the List of Wikipedias, and this attracts attention; but frankly it shouldn't. Number of articles as a measure of quality is a en:misuse of statistics; we should explain that to people and use other criteria instead (an example: the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles). In other words: if the stubs that bots created are good (readable, accurate, relevant), then there is no "overuse of bots". Think about it: how could there be? Compare with good human edits: if a human does a good edit, even a small one (to correct an inaccuracy, or a spelling mistake), then it is a good, albeit small, thing; and it doesn't follow that thousands and thousands of such edits are "overuse of humans" and that they should be limited and controlled. Quite the opposite, actually.

The rule you propose (50% of articles at least edited by a human) is quite moderate, considering the more extreme viewpoints of supporters of the proposal. Still I think it is wrong, because it assumes that bot-created stubs -- or many of them at least -- are an evil that has to be limited. In the absence of a discussion about this topic, I think this verges on prejudice. Bot-created stubs are, I think, not bad, not even in huge amounts. They're not great -- human articles are MUCH better -- but they're not bad. Many people think they're bad (at least in great numbers) -- you, Arnomane, Leptictidium, Ni'jluuseger, Thogo, etc. --, but many think they aren't -- I, Eukesh, Oldak Quill, AlimanRuna, Merovingian, etc. This question deserves further discussion.

Now, here's a proposition (which I've also made on [Proposals for closing projects/Radical cleanup of Volapük Wikipedia Arnomane's blog]): let's not judge Wikipedias by number of articles or edits alone; let's use two numbers: number of human edits and number of bot edits (assuming there's some way to get these numbers out of MediaWiki software). A project like vo.wp looks big if you judge it by all edits together, but it looks small if you judge it by human edits alone. A project like the Old English Wikipedia looks small by both counts. A project like the English Wikipedia looks big by both counts. Isn't that better? (Notice that judging projects by number of articles is like trying to evaluate the area of a rectangle by measuring the length of one of its sides -- just a mistake: you need two lengths to have an area. Likewise, you need more than one number to judge a Wikipedia project. Another possibility: number of articles x average length of articles.)

After all: why are we always insisting on number of articles? As Pauk said above, Wikipedia isn't the Olympic Games: we shouldn't be trying to get the world record. Someone had said on the foundation-l thread (there's a link to it on the talk page of this page) that lots of bot-created stubs are "cheating"; on the thread itself, someone answered: "cheating against who? Is there a competition here?" I hope not. --Smeira 10:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well what did you do? You exactly played this game. You did this page cheating in order to promote Volapük as a language and its Wikipedia. At the same time you say "page numbers are not important" (shall I give you once again the direct links to your own words?). You cannot argue both ways. So stop you blantant lying and hypocrisy! Arnomane 10:41, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, please let's avoid incivility. "Cheating" against who, if this is not the Olympic Games? What I did meant Volapük shows up high in the List of Wikipedias, and this may make a couple of people come to vo.wp -- attracting new contributors is mentioned in the Three-year plan here at Meta and is done in a variety of other quasi-propaganda ways (giving Wikipedia CD-ROMs away, WikiReaders, etc.). There may be ethical problems here, mainly about what is 'advertising' and for what purpose; I'm prepared to discuss them. But since the intention is to attract new Wikipedians, this is certainly not "cheating"! (against who? who suffered? who was harmed?).
But I also say number-of-articles doesn't measure quality, and people shouldn't pay attention to it. Yes, both things are true. People do pay attention to "number-of-articles" as if it meant much. They shouldn't, but they do. Since they do, the position of Volapük on the table may call their attention: what is this language? Here's a comparison: probably people shouldn't eat junk food, but they often do; McDonalds, for instance, has many customers. These customers should probably prefer something else, but they don't. So if you want to find many people, McDonalds' is a good place. Even if you want to meet these people only to argue with them that they shouldn't be there. (I've already met people who do exactly that in McDonalds' restaurants.) --Smeira 11:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smeira, it was not "cheating" per se. (That implies a contest, which this is not.) However, you did artificially inflate numbers, by your own admission, to attract attention. You knew that WMF emphasized numbers, especially those of over 100000 articles to feature certain Wikipedias. Now if we "misuse statistics" to rank the Wikipedias by number of articles, you certainly misused that fact to promote Volapuk. -- Yekrats 12:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surprisingly, I agree with you -- to an extent. I didn't "misuse statistics": other people misuse statistics, and the position of Volapük on the table attracts their attention. If they looked at the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles instead, this wouldn't be the case: the Vükiped is at the bottom there. And I will further agree that this is sad: they shouldn't have done that. If this whole bot-created stub story makes people change their minds about number-of-articles as a quality measure, I'll be happy -- even if this means they won't notice the Vükiped anymore. (Note also that the idea is to attract contributors to a Wikipedia, not promoting Volapük as a language -- both things are close, but they're not the same. For instance, the position of the French Wikipedia on the List of Wikipedias is not promotion for the French language -- not like the Alliance française is --, but for the work of fr.wp Wikipedians.)— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smeira (talk)

Smeira, also responding to your points above... You had joked previously (maybe not in this discussion) about uploading the entire galactic database of some 2 million articles, so surpass the English Wikipedia. If the number of articles don't matter to you, and a stub is OK, if it's accurate, why didn't you do this? Why did you stop where you did, if that statistic does not matter? A further question: Should EVERY Wikipedia upload the galactic database, or every city, county, town, and two-horse whistle-stop of the world? Why stop there? What if we scan in the phone book, and glean the name and address information, and use a bot to make a stub article for every person (with a phone) on the planet! It's accurate and updateable! With these great ideas, soon my Esperanto Wikipedia will be #1! Yes, these are absurd examples, but I'm trying to make the point: I think if every Wikipedia started using bots in the proportion that you did, our collection of Wikipedias would be much worse off. My definition of ethics is: If everyone does a particular action, what would happen? Would it be good or bad to the group or world as a whole? That's why some people see this as cheating: it was unethical. What I am trying to do with this proposal is find a way to remedy this breach of ethics fairly, and establish guidelines so that people won't abuse this in the future. -- Yekrats 12:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, yes, the joke was in the first closure proposal. Why don't I do this? (a) I don't like extragalactic objects (it's the extragalactic database) so much; I prefer cities, Volapükists, dinosaurs, stars, sciences, etc. But should someone else want to do such a major project (and discuss it with the others at vo.wp)... After all, wiki is not paper. (b) It's technically difficult. Think of time: it took about 3 months to upload 100 000 city stubs; the NASA extragalactic objects database has about 9 million entries; uploading all of them would take too 90 times longer, or about 23 years.
Your view of ethics is the one that en:Immanuel Kant supports: an ethical action is one about which one could wish that everybody would do it too. And indeed I would in principle agree: I'm what people here call an inclusionist. For the time being, Wikipedia is limited to encyclopedic information, so the phone book wouldn't be accepted because it's non-encyclopedic; but suppose it were. Suppose everybody uploaded their local phone books. What harm would that make? There would be more information available to users, and none of the old information would disappear. Everything would still be there! Many people think an article about en:South Park characters like en:Eric Cartman or en:Kyle Broflovski are "frivolous" and shouldn't be here (just ask the exclusionists!); but they don't do any harm to more "encyclopedic" articles like en:Philosophy or en:History. Neither would articles based on phone books, IMHO. Again, wiki is not paper.
Would this make the Esperanto Wiki #1? Well, if everybody did the same, it probably wouldn't; the other wikis would also grow fast, maybe even faster. But then, again you're talking about number-of-articles; as if the only 'good' way for a Wikipedia to be #1 is many many articles. In the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles, all those millions of phone book entries wouldn't change the position of any Wikipedia; the English Wikipedia would still be #1 even if it had fewer articles. And besides, why want to be #1? This is not the Olympic Games. (As you noted well, I didn't try to make the Vükiped become #1... I hope I've explained why now. :-) --Smeira 14:14, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@Yekrates. Well I don't know if this very proposal would work out but the direction is right. At first it maybe is a problem defining exact numbers. Hard rules often attrac people that love to circumvent them. However we can make this more ethical:

It is not in agreement with the goals Wikipedia in general to create huge parts of a language Wikipedia using a bot. Even if others did so in the past the Wikimedis Foundation strongly discourages such actions. If a community obviously violates these editor ethics and does not take effective actions to solve this quick the Wikimedia Community (all people of interested Wikimedia projects) will take appropriate measures for them with the assistance of the Wikimedia Foundation."

Maybe this makes it clear and avoids "funny edit counterims". Arnomane 10:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@Arnomane: I don't think the WMF "strongly discourages" such actions; that's not what I see in the foundation-l discussion that you took part in. As I see it, they think (a) if a project has no community then it should be closed, and (b) if a project is open, then, in agreement with foundational issues (NPOV, copyright respect, wiki-autonomy, etc. but nothing about bots), it is free to develop as it sees fit. --Smeira 11:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POV questions

Smeira, saying that you are an inclusionist doesn't make your actions more excusable or ethical, and it actually makes matters worse. Since you essentially *are* the Volapuk community, it makes the community inclusionist. In a normal Wikipedia community, there are inclusionists and exclusionists, and a solution to these kind of disputes usually lands in some rational middle ground. That can't happen in VO:WP, because you don't really have a community there to speak of, so the driving force of your "community" is almost completely inclusionist. You have an inclusionist POV problem at VO:WP which couples with the ethical problem, and that's why rational people must step in from the outside to remedy it. There are several clues to this which many of us have mentioned, but one big one is when JIMBO WALES comes in and says that you're bugging him, and you should clean up your mess and start playing nice like everyone else! :-D -- Yekrats 22:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, there is no need to insult the others at vo.wp. They are people, too, decent people in fact, with opinions of their own, in no way dominated by mine. Go talk to them if you doubt me. Did you notice Jmb, an occasional contributor to vo.wp (who helped me quite a lot with the Volapük Wiktionary -- thank you Jmb!), who actually agrees with those who don't like bot-created stubs? If someone treated you the same way you have treated the (small but existing) vo.wp community, how would you feel? I didn't mean to hurt your feelings with my comments; I hope we can still have a civilized conversation.

I think you can see that POV problems are unavoidable in any small project: when there are only, say, 10 active contributors, it's simply impossible that all viewpoints will be represented (the number of wiki-philosophies around is already above 10...). But this is a theoretical problem, not a practical one -- not only in vo.wp, but in any project with a small community. I am not against outsiders expressing their opinions; they should simply first come inside of vo.wp and open the discussion there if they want to criticize it. If they think vo.wp people discriminate them, or don't answer with arguments, or don't show decent behavior, then they can move on to the next level. I am not against higher-level discussions of controversial issues: Yekrats, I am the one who says bot-created stubs should be discussed at a higher level, by people with all backgrounds from all Wikipedias, while you think no discussion is necessary ('clean up your mess', to quote your unfriendly words). So: I have opinions, even strong opinions, obviously, but am I really biased? Am I stopping discussion, failing to provide arguments, reacting emotionally, etc.? Or are you perhaps a better candidate for the title of 'biased'...? In short: If the community, however small, does not prevent, and in fact invites, discussion of the controversial topic in question, both inside and outside its project, then the theoretical POV problem does not really exist.

Jimbo Wales himself asked to be treated as someone who has more experience, but no necessary omniscience, about Wikipedia topics. I think my reactions to his comments show proper respect, and try to highlight aspects of the problem that he may not have thought about yet. (Some of his formuations suggest he hasn't read the whole discussion here or in the first closure proposal, since he draws conclusions that have already been drawn by others.) He makes his opinion clear; but I think he would be the first to agree that his opinion is not infallible. (Many of the things he said could also apply to the Esperanto Wikipedia: "In this case, though, there are no speakers who need [eo.wp] in order to learn about the world. [...] If these people [= Esperantists] need to know about Cleveland, Ohio, they would use [...] another Wikipedia. [yet: eo:Klevlando (...)] Why would they [= Esperantists] want to do this? For the sheer joy of creating in the language, of sharing a hobby with friends, etc.". I don't know if this is also his opinion -- Jimbo Wales, would you like to comment? -- but if it were, would you immediately agree with it just because of who Jimbo Wales is? I again think he would be the first to oppose such "authority arguments" based on his own person.)

'Do nice like other people': many people on this page actually agree with my viewpoint on bots, Yekrats. Have you had a look at the link under Eukesh's vote, in the 'oppose' section? I think anybody interest in this issue should read what is there. Let me be clear: I think there is no real problem here, that the "fears" people have are based on a "competition" feeling -- 'who gets the highscore? the most interwiki links?' -- which should be discouraged. My actions have done no harm; I think they have been beneficial for vo.wp, even if slightly; and the ethical case is at most unclear.. I am doing nice, you see. I don't think you can show the opposite. You can stubbornly repeat that bot-created stubs are evil and refuse to discuss the issue, as Arnomane does, but that's hardly a demonstration.

Yekrats... Maybe you have the feeling that thousands of bot-created stubs somehow belittle the excellent work you have done in eo.wp. Believe me, it doesn't. A user who worked months to improve one single article, or a couple of them, is an excellent Wikipedian whose contributions are in no way belittled by one who created 100 stubs, with or without bots. Your excellent work is still in eo.wp, it continues there, it will not disappear not become less accessible because of vo.wp stubs. Nothing in vo.wp can destroy what you have done!... Yekrats, remember when you valliantly fought against the deletion of en:Category:Esperantists? There was this guy who simply refused to see that there were good criteria for deciding who's an Esperantist and who isn't. You explained it over and over, and he kept repeating the same old claims. Why are you doing the same with the issue of bot-created stubs?... --83.85.142.49 11:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC) --Smeira 11:29, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you'd reduce your Logorrhoea we'd be already a step ahead towards a constructive discussion. Arnomane 13:17, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.: Don't tell me about beeing uncivilised. I have tried several times to tell you this with more diplomatic words. But without any success (even the contrary). So my diagnosis is appropriate and anything but uncivil - just the necessary openess. Arnomane 13:21, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@Arnomane: I say nothing irrelevant, and I offered to discuss with you on your talk page (or mine) if you think there's too much here. I also don't like to repeat myself so often, but you haven't tried to discuss with me: you've squarely told me: what I say is right (i.e. bot-created stubs are evil), and if you don't agree you're bad. I'm also telling you in nice words: this is not a step towards a constructive discussion, it's actually closer to prejudice. You use angry words; would you like it if I said you have de:Logophobie? Probably not. I'm open: please start talking about why bot-created stubs are so bad, and why my solutions to the problems your proposal raised are bad (Yekrats is doing that, for instance), and we can discuss.
Sorry about the thread by the way -- I didn't mean to delete that text. I will be more careful in the future. --Smeira 14:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smeira, I will address your issues the best I can.

I meant no disrespect for others in the VO:WP. Whenever I've gone there, which admittedly isn't very often and not for several weeks, I've only seen edits by Smeira or Smeirabot. You would certainly know more than me on that matter. Sorry if I assumed you were the only one contributing there.
"Clean up your mess and play nice"... Please don't take offense by that; I was jokingly paraphrasing Jimbo, who suggested trimming EVERY bot article back, and happily working your wiki from there. I'm not a big fan of bot-articles, even in EO:WP. I have deleted more bot-additions than I can count. We have had, and continue to try to get a handle on our own bot problem at EO:WP, and we have a bot mess too. This is one of the reasons we have called a moratorium on bot additions, and some of the admins there with me have been working on cleaning it when we can. Yes, it is hurting our statistics when doing so, but this is a necessary evil in order to have a robust Wikipedia. I want no double standard with the Esperanto wiki.
I want no double standard with the Esperanto Wiki, however... Esperanto does have several hundred native speakers. Now, these native speakers also speak a second language--the tongue of the country where they are born--but their mother tongue, the language of the household, is Esperanto. I think that sets it apart from the other conlangs, and several of the "classical" languages that Wikipedia supports.
I don't think it's fair to have VO:WP stripped back to no bot additions. I think that would be draconian and unfair... nor do I think it should be moved to the incubator. (Please note my vote above.) However, I think WikiMedia needs to put REASONABLE limits on bot usage. I would hope that you would agree. The question would then be "what is 'reasonable'?" I tried to make this point with the absurd phone-book argument above, but I don't think you were getting it. I want you to agree, in principle, that some limits should be put on bot limits. Heck, if that captures me and EO:WP by our own petard, so be it. EO:WP has some 35k bot additions (by my estimates) out of 93k articles. That's too much in my opinion, but inclusionists there want to keep most of those articles except for the most egregious bot-abuse examples, so I grudgingly allow them to keep them for now! :-D
Admittedly, my big concern for VO:WP is personal. Whenever people bring up this discussion about VO:WP, there are some people who scorn conlangs who use it as an argument against conlangs in Wikipedia. You and I would both argue against that. Despite EO:WP's good works, there are still glaring embarrassing breaches which must be filled, robot junk to be deleted, and gray-area articles we must figure out what to do with. In addition to that, I think that the bot-to-human ratio VO:WP makes the itself and the whole conlang family look bad, so I feel it my obligation to point it out and try to fix it. I don't speak Volapuk, nor have a desire to, so I can't contribute at VO:WP. I have been sounding the "Delete the junk" war-drums at EO:WP for three or four years now. (I think people are sick of me posting in "forigendaj artikoloj" where we vote for deletion.) I mean you and the VO:WP no ill-will. When I bring those "deletionist" war-drums across the pond and sound them for VO:WP, please understand that I want excellence in Wikipedias, but specifically at the conlang wikis, so we can fight off the prejudice that we often must face. I fear that if we don't fix this "problem" and you make some concessions, this argument will come up again and again, casting questions and shadows over all the conlangs. I'm sure we would all rather spend time actually IMPROVING our Wikis than wasting time here every two or three months. -- Yekrats 14:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, thanks for raising these points! Here's my reaction to them:

1. Look up contributions by e.g. Malafaya, Hillgentleman, LadyInGrey, Robert, Chabi, HannesM... (Manie has been absent for a while, he's now busy with the Afrikaans wiktionary project, but I suppose he still counts). Zifs has also been doing some good work, though much less. And there are a number of anonymous users also.

3. I agree 100% with you there. Esperanto native speakers are an interesting new phenomenon in the conlang scene, and I agree they give even more legitimacy to eo.wp. (They're an interesting phenomenon, unique in the conlangs -- except for a few unconfirmed rumors about native speakers of Volapük in the 19th century -- and quite worthy of attention.) The person who might perhaps disagree is Jimbo Wales, since he doesn't mention "native speakers" in his comments, simply "people who need the language to explore the world" -- and since no native speakers of Esperanto are monolingual, they don't desperately need Esperanto to explore the world. (I don't know that this is Jimbo's opinion; I hope he'll comment on that. But it would agree with the points he makes.) I, as an Esperantist (or an Esperanto speaker/user, in case Esperantists are only people who participate in the Movado), am certainly convinced that eo.wp is a legitimate project.

2., 4., 5. Here the problem of putting limits to articles created by bots. I certainly support a high-level discussion of this issue, but I think it's necessary to agree that bot-created articles constitute a problem -- even if not in essence, only when they're many. To me -- and it seems to other people on this page -- it is far from obvious that bot-created stub, as long as it's readable, accurate and relevant, create a problem. I believe you're sincere, Yekrats: you're not targetting vo.wp, you advocate the same for eo.wp as for vo.wp (control of bots), and I don't think you're an extremist (note that I called your proposal 'moderate'). Let us please start a discussion about bots and the articles they create somewhere here! (Do you know how to do that, by the way?) All I say is: before you talk about 'control', you have to show there is a problem. I did get your phone book example (basic message: 'where do we stop? is anything permissible?'), but maybe you missed my answer: wiki is not paper, and if millions of stubs on telephone owners appeared (they probably wouldn't, on notability grounds, but if they did): what harm would be done? As long as storage space is not a problem (if it ever becomes a problem, then of course I'd agree we'd have to be more selective), these millions of stubs would in no way damage or belittle the great work of millions of contributors to all Wikipedia projects. If as you say the bot-to-human ratio at vo.wp makes many people think ill of it -- then they haven't really thought about the issue, like those people who don't like Wikipedia because they think "anyone can edit" is a stupid principle. (There's lots of them around still...) We shouldn't think that number-of-articles is like a highscore that people are competing about; it's simply a number that tells how many times the 'save page' button was used to create a new page. Stubs don't destroy excellence, because excellence doesn't come from number of articles; they simply add little bits of information. In short: let's discuss limits, but before we do, let's agree that we have a problem that needs limits. (And again: how do we start this discussion? by creating a new page here at Meta?).

Here's two further thoughts, which might or might not be transferrable to the case of bot-articles in eo.wp. (a) There are other ways of judging quality that don't involve number-of-article. In the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles, Esperanto is way above Volapük, and there is nothing bots can do to change that significantly -- only if people write lots of good articles in vo.wp, which I think everybody would like! :D ... Maybe such criteria as that list uses should be given more attention. (b) 'Deleting' is not the only thing that can be done to change the situation of bot-created stubs; they can also be improved... by people or by bots. I've been working on vo:Ambérieu-en-Bugey, to make it look like that (based on the format they have in the Dutch Wikipedia); the result is comparable, I think, to eo:Aurillac, which is a human-created stub. When I'm done, I'll try to write a script and similarly improve with SmeiraBot the other French stubs in vo.wp. In my view, this is better than deleting them.

A final comment: I fully agree that it would be better for all of us to be working on our Wikipedias. Discussing bot-stubs at a higher level would free us from the stress of having to defend ourselves every other month... (I thought it was a sad detail -- probably unintended, but still sad -- that Arnomane started this proposal on Dec. 25. I remember thinking: oh, what a Christmas present...) I hope this can be done. Because the best way to improve our Wikipedias is to work consistently on them, and to discuss cross-Wikipedia questions at the appropriate level: that of general policy. --Smeira 18:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You try to disctract from Volapük Wikipedia and try to conduct an abstract debate with abstract conclusions everyone can live with cause they don't effect anything. Effective general rules never origin from abstract debates. They evolve from practice. Practice in cases like the Lombard Wikipedia and now Volapük Wikipedia. So here and now the Volapük Wikipedia is the matter.

I also find it rather dishonest to speculate if Jimbo did read carefully enough given his comment. Don't confuse this with defending an idol. I also do this with other person when I have to solve some disputes in my role as a Wikipedia administrator and OTRS member.

Furthermore: Know you backyard. Today it took me 5 minutes to find several 100 Volapük articles without a single sentence and many Volapük articles full of stupid bot errors resulting from massive bot edits without any manual check. If you don't find all of them within 5 minutes or if you try to ignore it stop telling people that your bot didn't harm the Volapük Wikipedia and the Wikipedia brand in general. I won't give you the list cause I want a proof from you that you know your own backyard. So I wait for your "list of bad articles" that need particular attention. If you don't do this yourself you proof that all your words on quality improvements are idle talk. Arnomane 00:24, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, the first practical issue is that projects are independent. You have shown bad faith by asking for admin rights on a project where you did not even have a userprofile. By making this a META issue without talking to the vo.community you have made yourself look ridiculous. The fact that you are a Wikipedia admin and an OTRS volunteer makes it only worse. You do known better.

You want to enforce your vision of Wikipedia on others. Why? It is not welcome when you do it in this way. GerardM 08:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for talking it down to the "mad Arnomane went crazy" level and avoiding any debate on topic (but I know for you this is on topic). Arnomane 10:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And once again you acted in bad faith. How often do I need to stress the point that I am not keen on admin rights in vo.wp but that I welcome any other measure that has an effective result? Arnomane 10:21, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@Arnomane, the "admin rights" and "sending it back to the incubator" were certainly no-go issues for me, which seemed like it was at the crux of this proposal. Also problematic for me: It seemed to target VO:WP specifically, and the remedies you suggested seemed like punishment. You wanted to bomb it back to the stone age! No, what should happen is there should be a general policy, if anything, and if VO:WP or any other Wikipedia violates that policy, then measures should be taken. However, in the proposal, I think it would be fair to list VO and LMO as examples of the sort of thing you're trying to prevent. So, such a proposal would debate whether a stub-filled botopedia was a good thing or not, what the reasonable limit of bot stubs would be if any, and reasonable remedies if a Wikipedia violates that. Again, we should not just target VO, but this should be a Wikimedia-wide regulation, and the more reasonable the proposal is, the more likely it is to pass. (hint hint!) I might suggest such a proposal myself, but I'm not sure where it would be appropriate to put it. -- Yekrats 11:43, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats: we may be on different sides of the bot-stub divide, but I agree 100% with your proposal here. This is exactly what I think should happen! And I've also pointed out to Arnomane that you guys would have a better chance of winning if you did that -- just read what I wrote below! And finally we would discuss the real problem, not non-issues like "interwiki links" and "Smeira is bad". Thanks for writing this! --Smeira 11:52, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane... you're again attacking me with ad hominems? Again I'm "bad", I'm "dishonest", I'm "distracting"?... And when GerardM, much more politely than you, asks why you want to enforce your viewpoints without local community support, all you say is he's claiming "mad Arnomane went crazy?"... You said it, he didn't. What he said about you was that you're an admin and an OTRS volunteer, which you also said yourself. And you react as if that was offensive? Ah, Arnomane, Arnomane... Wouldn't it be better to present arguments and try to make points, like other supporters of your proposal have done, instead of accusing others of "dishonesty" and "bad faith" without supporting evidence? Can't you simply present arguments and try to make a point?... OK, let's pretend you're not offending us. Here are my reactions to your comments. They are sincerely meant, they are relevant arguments, nothing else. Please treat them as such.

(1) Re: "abstract conclusions, distract debate". Of course the Volapuk Wikipedia is the point here. But the only "crime" you can accuse it of is creating lots of stubs with bots. Now, how exactly discussing this fact "distracts from the main discussion"? That is exactly the main point of contention! If bot-created stubs aren't bad, then the Volapuk Wikipedia hasn't done anything wrong, and no "cleaning" is necessary. (The Lombard Wikipedia had much worse problems; bot-stubs was a minor issue -- just look at the proposal and read the discussions: the "invented dialect" and "anti-Italian" feelings were much more hotly debated. In the Volapuk case, there is nothing except bot-created stubs.) Now: are bot-created stubs an abstraction? They are exactly what you want to delete! I want to discuss them; you don't; who exactly is obstructing whom here? Note also that I'm not the only person who thinks that bot-created stubs aren't bad: other people, from other Wikipedias, have expressed this opinion here. So: there is no consensus. You can't act as if there were. You need to show your reasons first. You need to argue that what you want to do is good. Because not everybody thinks so. Just read the comments next to the votes. Is this asking for "abstract conclusions that don't affect anything"? Oh my god...
Here, let me also say something that you should probably think about. If you had raised the discussion about bot-created stubs at a higher level, without targeting vo.wp or any specific Wikipedia, you would probably get more support. Many people who voted against this proposal also don't like bot-created stubs; they voted against you just because you ignored the rules and didn't talk to us at vo.wp before making this proposal, and so you irritated them. They would probably have voted in your favor in a broader discussion. In other words: in a broader discussion about bot-created stubs, you would have more support; you would have a better chance of winning than here. And think of it: if bot-limiting rules became WMF policy, you would "solve" not only the "Volapuk bot problem", but also all the others in all Wikipedias that create stubs with bots: Polish, Dutch, Italian, French... All at once, and without having to ask for admin rights again and again, for every new Wikipedia you think needs to be "cleaned"! Do you see? You should be favorable to a higher-level discussion or vote because more people would agree with you and you'd have a better chance of success! The fact that I, not you, ask for it, just shows how sincere I am about the issue. For my viewpoint, for my ideas, for my work at vo.wp, this broader discussion would be more dangerous. I would have less support.

(2) Re: Jimbo's opinions. Note that I am not "speculating" about Jimbo Wales' opinions: I am reacting to Yekrats' interpretation by offering my own interpretation. And I am inviting Jimbo Wales to comment and tell us what he thinks. How can you find this dishonest? You do this with me all the time... Just look at what you wrote in your blog: you read my explanations in my talk page and interpreted them. Surely this isn't "dishonest"?

(3) Re: finding problems in vo.wp. "Know your backyard", you said. And it took you 5 minutes to find pages with bot-copying errors? I already posted links to pages where you can find them, in my answer to Hillgentleman's "Two Questions" section above. Did you read it? Do you bother reading anybody's opinion or checking anybody's work before accusing him/her of not knowhing his/her backyard?... Ah, Arnomane, if you had followed my links, it would have taken you 30 seconds, not 5 minutes. Didn't they teach you that the list of longpages and the list of wanted categories would be a good place to find them? Just look at the red links that aren't in Volapuk: you'll find lots of them. Now see: we've been steadily correcting these problems. A lot of what I and Malafaya were doing before you started this proposal was exactly correcting and addressing these problems. Did you notice we have special categories for dealing with problematic pages -- like vo:Klad:Pads koräkabik (= pages to correct), or vo:Klad:Pads ba dotiks (= pages potentially wrong), and others that I've listed in my answer to Hillgentleman above? Didn't you also notice that these categories have been steadily decreasing -- as we correct the pages and deal with their problems, as good Wikipedians should? Didn't you check my contributions page, or Malafaya's, to see what we were doing before you submitted the proposal? No? So now: if I say you are making irresponsible accusations, what would you have to say in your defense?
You also mentioned hundreds of pages that didn't have a single complete Volapuk sentence. Not copying mistakes, but real empty pages? Funny, Chaddy only found five pages on months that were like that -- he didn't try to tag any others. Why didn't you give any links to an "empty" page without even "one Volapuk sentence" in your last comment? If you found "hundreds", can you list them somewhere and give us a link to it? I haven't found any other "empty pages" there yet. Maybe there are some, but I think they would show up in the list of short pages, wouldn't they? If they're empty, they should be very short; shorter than the stub (with one full sentence) that heads the list. And I don't see any there. I would love to find them and correct them; if they are really empty and cannot be improved, I'd be more than happy to delete them myself. Where have you found them? Can you share your high de.wp admin wisdom with common mortals like me?...

Arnomane: I don't like being ironical with you. Believe me, I don't. But as you said, sometimes friends have to use harsh words. You do make unsupported accusations, and you do use impolite words unnecessarily. This is really tyring. "I can find bad pages in your wiki in 5 minutes and you can't, nyah nyah nyah!" Don't you have anything better to say? --Smeira 11:32, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Curiously enough, I went do Shortpages at DE.WIKI and found this (0 bytes/empty at the time of this post). Don't consider it an attack, Arnomane. Just it's easy to find something very specific if you're actually looking for it. Malafaya 12:25, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't compare apples and pies. If you compare yourself with de.wp you have to live with the policy that an inapropriate article gets deleted latest 7 days after it was brought to your attention. This very example was a novice user that created a wrong redirect, which he later blanked (cause he wasn't able deleting it). This very page was created just some hours ago. And now it is gone (any user who knows the subject is encouraged to start a fresh article with content). The mass of Volapük non-articles I mentioned above exist for months. So either stop comparing yourself to de.wp or life with the fact that you have 7 days to correct or delete an issue after it was brought to your attention. Arnomane 12:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, please read what Malafaya wrote. He's not comparing de.wp to vo.wp, he's pointing out it's easy to find bad articles -- even in de.wp. And indeed it is. Now you haven't bothered to check that we've been correcting these articles, you haven't checked how they have been steadily decreasing (just check the stats in Malafaya's page, for starters!), and you make claims you cannot support -- where are the empty articles you found in vo.wp? We are not comparing de.wp to vo.wp, anybody can see they are very different projects. Only you have mentioned "comparisons", not us. --Smeira 13:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely. Arnomane, I brought that article to your attention and so you managed to take appropriate action even if it took you (DE.WIKI) 36 hours (maybe more if I hadn't mentioned it). So I ask you if you could please point any articles in VO.WIKI that are not covered by the categories/pages mentioned by Smeira above that are worth corrections so that we can take appropriate action, even if we are just half a dozen contributors. Thanks, Arnomane. Malafaya 13:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Know your backyard. See above. The list is on my hard disk. If you don't know/find these articles now you proof that you acted careless. Don't force me to post this list "somewhere you don't want it". Arnomane 13:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do know my backyard. Clicking Random page at VO.WIKI for 1 minute yielded me 1 page that was "less correct" (not empty, not in English, just missing coordinates in the text). Of course, I wonder how you managed those 100s of bad random pages in 5 minutes. FYI, it took me 10 seconds to find 2 pages in DE.WIKI that are same or worse quality than the VO.WIKI pages you intend to erase (should I post these and some more I will find "somewhere you don't want it"). I'm not comparing different Wikis, which of course have their own reality. I'm making the statement that you have that kind of pages (1 sentence, 2 sentences, 1 infobox) in *ANY* Wiki. It's an innevitable thing that no one will be able to control (if they want to control) 100%. Malafaya 14:03, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am not denying that de.wp has pointless "articles". The differences are the ratio waste/real articles and especially the reaction time. The reaction time of a community is the key. With your bot run you lowered your reaction time so dramatically that you are unable to maintain vo.wp. This is what I am talking about all the time. vo.wp is orders of magnitudes larger than the current vo.wp community can deal with. You simply have no other chance in vo.wp than making a list of key assets you need to care about and to get rid of the rest. But well I am talking against a wall. A wall of deafness and blindness. Arnomane 14:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(I will abstain from replying to your "wall" comment.) I understand your reaction when you say we are "unable to maintain vo.wp" because you don't have a clue of "how big is the problem". You believe the problem is bigger than it actually is. SmeiraBot is not creating the big amount of articles it did in the past so the big growth of vo.wiki has ceased, so basically we are catching up. If you look at the statistics at my user page, you can see a set of statistics (in section "Nüns"). These stats ("Klads mekabik") refer to the number of "Missing/wanted categories", the place where most problematic articles fall into. In the beginning of December, this number was above 1000. As of today, it's around 680. Of course, some of the missing categories are real and do not represent articles with problems, so that number doesn't have to decrease to 0 to signify there are no problematic articles. I would say we have been doing a good job, don't you agree? Malafaya 15:07, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations for your quick work. You just need a little more than 20 years until have touched every article only once. I must say I am deeply impressed by your working speed. Well what are twenty years compared to the universe? Nothing... Yea. Arnomane 16:04, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, Arnomane, just about 2 months should do. You haven't looked at the list in your hard drive for a while, haven't you? And to think that the bad stubs in de.wp have been there for longer than that... --Smeira 16:08, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<reset indent>Hey everybody, I propose just ignoring Arnomane's bad humor and concentrating on Yekrats' proposal. OK? --Smeira 16:08, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ich wüsste nicht, dass ich hier zum Scherzen aufgelegt bin. Arnomane 16:31, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Kein Scherzen. Aber falls Du was Neues zu sagen hast, kannst Du immer mitmachen. --Smeira 16:53, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am tired

I am tired of people that love to exercise bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy and that abuse bureaucracy in order to promote themselves. People that oppose to something cause it is just "unusal" regardless if it brings in new fresh ideas to solve an ongoing conflict in an alternative way.
I am tired of people that think binary. People that oppose to something cause they weren't invited first personally, cause it was christmas, cause they dislike some minor side aspect, cause they are unable to evolve a proposal, that never was meant to be perfect from the start (there can't be a proposal that is perfect from the start, it evolves in every stage, even at execution).
I am tired of people that try to cover their massive failures with debates on political correctness. Someone that wasn't carefully wasn't carefully, someone that speculates about other reasonable peoples understanding was dishonest, someone that is unable to acknowledge any critics is a stubborn person, someone that.... well you know. This very person deserves open clear criticism in order to bring the discussion on topic otherwise we should better spent the time talking about the weather and world peace.
I am tired of people that are unable to express themselves in short sentences. People that abuse the "wiki is not paper" idea for pesting discussions with blabla. People that even answer to repeated friendly requests writing more concise with long cloudy sentences full of questions and "wonderment".

I know your answers, cause you wrote them already several times. So save me from redundant comments. Arnomane 13:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, I am working on a proposal that I find much more palatable, and I'd like your advice to help build it. Smeira, you too, and really anyone else who's interested in this. It's at User:Yekrats/Proposal_for_limits_of_bot-usage. It's only in a skeleton-form at the moment, but hopefully I will have a chance to flesh it out soon. The basic tenets I am trying to make are:

Is a "botopedia" Wikipedia a problem? (I tend to think "yes".)
If so, what limits should be set? (I suggest a 3:1 bot-article to human ratio.)
If those limits are violated, what should we do about it? (I suggest setting a reasonable deadline for them to comply, and if not, delete the bot articles to acceptable levels.

Thanks! -- Yekrats 15:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good, Yekrats. I find it a good idea. I think maybe we should start defining what is a bot article: a bot-created article that was never touched by a human seems to me the only "fair" approach. Simply a bot-created article that has been rewritten/rearranged by a human cannot fall in this category. A human-created article that was totally overwritten by a bot could fall in it but how to detect this? Malafaya 15:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will comment on it but I will wait with that a bit until I have thought deeper about it. Arnomane 16:28, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, Matthew:7.3. Hillgentleman 15:43, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Aha. Something else to say? Or shall I add that I forgot say: "I am tired of people that love to ask fundamental questions which were answered ages ago in order to avoid moving on to the next topic." Arnomane 16:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about: people who are tired should go rest a little and let the others do the talking? --Smeira 16:47, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"people that love to ask fundamental questions which were answered ages ago" - Do you mean Socrates and Copernicus? Hillgentleman 02:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Propose to close

This discussion has not led to better mutual understanding and has been turning and turning in repetitve cirles for quite a while. Let us close this discussion and move on to User:Yekrats/Proposal_for_limits_of_bot-usage and related pages. Hillgentleman 16:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support. --Smeira 16:48, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice strategy to silence something that doesn't please you. Arnomane

Sigh!... --Smeira 16:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias

I have finally completed my Proposal for Policy on overuse of bots in Wikipedias, and would encourage any suggestions and comments. -- Yekrats 17:34, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A note on canvassing for votes

I had thought that in general "canvassing" or "campaigning" for votes is frowned upon here. Smeira, while I can understand you posting a link on the VO.WP town pump, and sending messages to a few close friends, what I don't understand is why you felt it was necessary to notify so many people? If anyone wondered why so many people were jumping to the defense of Volapuk, this is why: A Google search yields dozens and dozens of invitations from Smeira to various people to help save the Volapuk Wikipedia. I received one of those invitations, myself.

Similar tactics were taken during the attempt to save VO:WP from closure. See here.

I hope the deciding administrator takes this into consideration when looking at the Oppose votes. Smeira continues to game the system. -- Yekrats 19:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We should also take note of the effects the various blog and discussion threads on the number of supports. Hillgentleman 19:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's a big difference about someone talking about it on Gmane and rallying people to vote for a particular side. Smeira did that twice! In fact, it seems like the big Gmane discussion was someone who SUPPORTS Volapuk's autonomy. Much of it is neither for or against this proposal, but just about it. -- Yekrats 19:56, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe again this "ethical question" is very subjective, just like limits for bots. While for many people asking for participation in this voting may seem foul play, for others it's perfectly legitimate. Smeira is not casting a vote for them. He's asking people to vote. I don't see any wrong doing in it, be it Smeira or Arnomane doing it. I also don't think it's legit for a bunch of ordinary people (all of us here who voted, without any control; how many under 18 are there?) to decide the future of a project such as vo.wiki, but here we are, aren't we? --Malafaya 20:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Look, from the comment of your previous vote: " I tend to oppose the closure, even though I think Smiera's actions are terrible. " - As this discussion is explicitly *not* about closure, I see that your getting a notification points to that S. Meira is inviting more people to the discussion and not simply rallying supporters. And I take it that by gmane you meant the foundation-l list. However, you can check out the other lists on the talk page of this page. In any case this discussion is very prominant in many ways even without further advertisements. Hillgentleman 20:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Most of his invitations said, "...help us fight against it with your vote?" I think I was a unique case. Either way, the end always justifies the means with you guys. Ethics be damned, right? -- Yekrats 20:49, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ethics concepts change with time. As of today, political parties do campaign without being judged whether it's ethical or not. If political parties' real campaigns are also unethical, then I agree with you. Nobody should ever give a hint about who/what to vote for... And who are "you guys" (I was talking for myself)? --Malafaya 20:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just so you know, passing off ethics as passe by saying "Ethics concepts change with time." is a pretty sure-fire way to show that you're not being ethical!!! :-D Thanks for the laugh. -- Yekrats 01:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC) [reply]

It's just like saying that "Racism still exists" is a good hint at saying I'm racist... At least you had a good laugh ;-). --Malafaya 10:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC) [reply]

And, Yekrat, I have a question just for you. You are not a good kid, by your own account, are you? You have known this "canvassing" for a long time - Have you let it go unnoticed, until you switched your side? Would you have let it gone unnoticed again? And why? Is your ethics also changing with time? :) Hillgentleman 14:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is not an ethics or moral issue, but rather a practical convention. We in general avoid canvasing to prevent misrepresenting certain points of views in a vote. And as I have indicated, blogs and discussion threads operating outside wikimedia can also serve to enhance certain points of view. However, we are discussing a proposal, and hence the weight of the number is not as significant as the weight of the arguments. Hillgentleman 01:33, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Again, a blog or posting a personal opinion about something is passive. Actively urging 100 people to vote for your side is a babystep away from sockpuppetry. -- Yekrats 10:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, we heard you before and you don't need to repeat yourself. Now let me repeat:) : Blogs and discussion threads operating outside wikimedia can also serve to enhance, in the same way canvassing does, certain points of view. However, we are discussing a proposal, and hence the weight of the number is not as significant as the weight of the arguments. Hillgentleman 14:34, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well among others I blogged on the topic but I think despite my proposal I urged every reader to take time previous to comment/vote. I neither like silly "oppose" voters that apparently didn't read carfuly nor "support" voters that do the same. For example I was very angry about the support vote of Fossa (I probably should have added the same take-time-disclaimer to my comment at wikide-l). So there is a difference if you just seek for your votes or if you comment at some central places and at least try to reflect about the issue (even from different viewpoints).

As I didn't want to compete at the "who writes the most comments" competition I also didn't campaign for my proposal. I just wrote two initial comments at these two places, which was IMHO enough to inform everyone that really is interested in such meta-things.

I simply dislike vote seeking and even if this guarantees that I have less support votes I will not do the same. Arnomane 20:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arnomane, It is great that most of we want people to understand the issues and not simply vote and go. Your comments on your blog under the title "The bot equivalent to the atom bomb was ignited." include A request for deleting all minor bot generated articles in Volapük Wikipedia and moving it back to the Wikimedia Incubator. But see yourself how these people manage to discuss things down to the level of supressed minorities and other things that always “work”. Interesting summary. Hillgentleman 20:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting selective quote. I never said that I post without opinion, eveything else would be strange. Arnomane

Indeed. The quote is taken from the concluding line of your opinion. And as I said, we should also consider the effect of it on the number of supports. Hillgentleman 01:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrat, I believe that we all agree that the number of votes can mislead. At the end of the day, we should consider the weights of the arguments and not count votes. Hillgentleman 22:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, Arnomane... Polls are evil, we all know that. As the others have said, we shouldn't be "voting", we should be comparing arguments and trying to reach consensus. Why are we voting? Why aren't we discussing? Arnomane, you refrain from engaging in serious discussion, you have never answered any of the questions I asked you (to start with: my proposed solutions to the "problems" your raised in your rationale) and have failed to presented a single new argument after said rationale. Yekrats, you haven't considered the points I've raised in your own project page -- points which address all the problems you see in the use of bots to create articles. It looks as though you can't say why it is that bot-created aritcles are a problem -- you don't react to my answers... You two invoke authority arguments, or you say "it's been decided long ago"... and you can't even link to this long-ago decision... It looks as if you need to consider questions of behavior again, because you can't find anything else to complain about. Sigh, there I go to these details again, losing time, and sadly wondering when anyone will get back to discussing the points of contention...

@My words: "to fight against this proposal"... To use Arnomane's surprisingly well put words, "I never said I post without opinion". I do have an opinion: I think this proposal is wrong, and, as BirgitteSB said, a dangerous precedent for similar Wiki-coups-d'état. It should be fought against, by anyone who believes that Wikipedia should grow freely, and test every possible way of providing knowledge in more languages. The discussion about quality, or even about bots, can be done without proposals such as this one -- as Yekrats' proposal quite nicely demonstrates. And note: my language is much, much nicer than Arnomane's... just look at what he wrote on this page, and also on his blog.
@Inviting: Is it "frowned upon"? Why? (Please provide link :-). My guess: because polls are evil, right? I.e. we shouldn't be here voting, we should be trying to reach consensus by comparing arguments (which is what I keep suggesting we should do, but you guys prefer to vote...). Or else, why would it be "frowned upon"? In all democratic processes, we see the opposing viewpoints campaingning to get votes and bringing information favorable to their viewpoint to the electorate. Words like "fight" are thrown around all the time, and are understood as signifying one's disagreement with the opposite side. You may want to nit-pick, but I'll say there's a babystep from Arnomane's blog and its effect on voters to my invitations -- and it's far from clear in which direction the babystep here goes: from better to worse or from worse to better?... --Smeira 17:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If no-one told anyone else about this vote, then this page would be empty, surely? --HappyDog 14:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um... no. -- Yekrats 00:07, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So how did other people find out about it then? Was it from the 'canvassing for votes' that was an advert on the Main Page to everyone who visits MediaWiki regardless of whether they are interested, or from the 'canvassing for votes' that was being told about it by someone who knew you had expressed a past interest in this subject, and therefore might have something valuable to contribute? --HappyDog 17:59, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are being intensionally obtuse, I'm afraid. There is a big difference between having the debate listed publicly on MediaWiki, and Smiera specifically telling over 100 people how to vote. It's funny that Smeira only contacted people who were on the side of preserving VO:WP. Since we're contacting "interested parties", let's contact all the people that voted to have Volapuk deleted in November, OK? Here's a rough draft: "You may be interested to know that there is an on-going vote to remove the bot articles out of the Volapuk and move it back to the incubator. In case you agree that this is a good proposal, perhaps you could help us support it by casting your vote? Thanks!" -- Yekrats 13:47, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, I (speaking for myself) believe that's perfectly legitimate. Note that "in case you agree that this is a good proposal" is there. It's not saying on what side to vote. My 2 cents. Malafaya 15:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"It's not saying what side to vote." Do you guys need to nitpick EVERY LITTLE DETAIL, ad nauseum? If I were to say, "The sky is blue." and you'd say, "Technically, it's not blue, but actually it's azure." And you'd even put the links in there to try to prove your point! -- Yekrats 15:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning that I speak for myself didn't prevent you from saying you guys ad nauseam, did it? Still, I believe such a request is valid. Anyway, Yekrats, you should be trying to discuss this proposal instead of bringing lateral issues to this discussion, don't you agree? Who's actually nitpicking? Malafaya 17:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats, you are avoiding the actual arguments and insisting on a technicality -- whether or not it is ethical to call other people. Wouldn't it be better to think about the arguments I wrote under your vote -- how the fact that errors persist for more than a year in the Esperanto and English Wikipedias does not mean their communities are too small or incapable of dealing with their problems? This looks like a direct counter-example to the motivation you gave for changing sides. After all, the topic of the debate on this page is neither the ethics of democracy nor the color of the sky. --Smeira 01:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A question of opinion?

<reset indent>Wow, to say that I'm "avoiding the actual arguments" is quite a stretch! I have been discussing this and expressing my opinions throughout this debate. To sum up very briefly: I think that these sorts of bot articles are only barely informative at best, and stagnating or just plain wrong at its worst. Wikipedias that use bots to the degree that you have, Smeira, have cursed themselves, in my opinion. I think overuse of bots will not only taint your Wiki, but it will also make all Wikipedias look bad. I'm pretty sure these opinions will not change quickly. However, all of these viewpoints are only my opinion. Your opinion is different and valid, too. I arrange the truth to support my opinion, and you do the same to support yours. But in the end, they are both just opinions. Frankly, I see VO:WP as analogous to an ugly dilapidated house in a nice neighborhood: The front yard has several rusty dead cars on the front lawn without any wheels. You say, "I can treat my property however I want! One of those cars is a '57 Chevy, man! It will be a beauty when I finally get the engine and wheels and get the thing fixed up!" Indeed, it is something that you've invested a lot into, but your neighbors don't see it that way. Your neighbors say it's an ugly rustbucket eyesore that is causing their own property values to go down and that the cars look like they will forever be a rustbuckets. They see you constantly tinkering on them, but they don't see it getting significantly better. After the neighbors complain to condemn your property, you end up winning, because you bring enough people to the town hall meeting to create a faux show of force. After you win, you bring in another couple of dead cars to flaunt your new mandate. But only two months later, another complaint is brought against you. And here we are, one neighbor with a bunch of rusty cars with great potential, and on the other side, a concerned community of neighbors whose own property is made to look bad just by being nearby. Both sides have good points -- indeed the age-old debate of individual rights versus community rights -- which can be argued ad nauseum. Smeira, every time I argue with one of you, Malafaya, yourself, et al. poke me back. It feels like me playing ping-pong with three or four people. I'm not saying you don't have the right to express your opinion. But it gets tiresome after a while, and I can choose to stop playing at any time! Apparently, I can't convince you any easier than you can convince me. Please understand, I don't have the energy to craft three or four arguments a day! However, don't worry: I'm setting up a Python script to automatically argue with you every time one of you responds to me! :-D -- Yekrats 17:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yekrats: you are of course entitled to your opinion. But note: this is not simply a matter of opinion: it is a matter of right or wrong, of deciding what to do. It is about deleting the work of others just because some people deem it inappropriate -- not "a concerned community", but "some people", with whom many disagree on principled grounds, as you saw on your own proposal page. Which is why we need arguments and ideas: a decision must be made. And you, unfortunately, are avoiding that. You repeat your opinion (and far from me the idea of achieving conversion! once a believer, always a believer...), but you don't advance new arguments, and you don't admit when your previous arguments are met with counter-arguments. It's almost as if you knew that you are wrong, but still insisted in saying: "I don't care! Still I don't like it!". Indeed, if as you say you don't have time to "craft" (!) new arguments and discuss the ones that have been proposed, you probably should stop contributing. It's up to you. Look at what you say:

"I think that these articles are only barely informative at best, and stagnating at worst." They are indeed barely informative, but so are hundreds of thousands of others in other Wikipedias, and nobody deletes them there. How can they be "stagnating", if this only depends on the community? If people are willing to work, a Wikipedia doesn't stagnate. If they aren't willing to work, then it does. This simply doesn't depend on the amount of bot-created articles, but on the amount of active editors. Now ask yourself: is this only a matter of opinion?
"Wikipedias that use bots to the extent you have, Smeira, have cursed themselves, in my opinion". Well, this is clearly not an objective argument, right? What if someone said: "Wikipedias written in artificial languages that nobody needs like Esperanto have cursed themselves with irrelevance, in my opinion."? I'm sure you'd counter-argue with exactly my arguments: you're entitled to your opinion, but we like it, so let us be. Why won't you let us do the same? Now ask yourself: Is this a simple question of opinion, or are we dealing with prejudice here?
"I think overuse of bots will not only taint your Wiki, but it will also make all Wikipedias look bad". Now: any evidence? I mentioned an interview to a Dutch TV station in which the size of the Vükiped is to be mentioned as a good sign: WMF is concerned with small languages. The 'taint' you mention is usually among Wikipedians who have a certain philosophy. Does the general public even care? If they use Wikipedia, they're looking for accurate information in a language they can understand. Since Volapük has so few speakers, how many people are going to check it out and complain about its structure -- other than Wikipedians concerned that their philosophy is not being followed? As far as I can tell, 'anyone can edit' is a much, much bigger source of bad comments and bad image for Wikipedia than 'there are a lot of stubs'. Any evidence to the contrary? Mentioning it would work much better than a hundred 'rusty' metaphors.

Now, Yekrats, here is what you did not address. As you'll see, they're exactly the most important points for this whole discussion -- and this is why I say you have been avoiding the arguments:

The "small community" argument: you are too small to take care of so many articles. We answered:
1. We are doing that, e.g. with respect to correcting errors. Look at the statistics! To claim that something is impossible when it is happening right in front of you is not really logical.
2. You do have similar problems in the Esperanto and English Wikipedia: errors that went undetected for over a year. This doesn't mean your communities can't take care of your articles, but simply that error correcting is a never-ending task.
The "bots vs. people" argument: bots are not people, so they shouldn't create articles; bots "belittle" humans and their creative work.
1. Bot scripts are written and run by people and for people. It's always people who decide what to do; bots can't do that.
2. A stub is a stub is a stub. If de:Streator was created manually instead of with a bot, that doesn't make it better than vo:Streator -- nor does it make eo:San Jose (Kalifornio) any better than vo:San Jose (California). If at all, it suggests that some Wikipedia are losing some efficiency by having humans do the work of bots.
3. Stubs don't belittle anybody. All the work that people have invested in good articles is in no way belittled or destroyed by the existence of little stubs. This doesn't depend on their number. Come to think of it, how could it? They are simply different things, not comparable to each other.
4. Stubs provide some information. As GerardM wrote in his text: providing information when there is little or none, small stubs are, in many cases, the best that can be done -- and if it can be done, if it costs nothing and if there are people willing to take care of them, why not? They contribute only a little, but a little is better than nothing. How would deleting them make anything better? How would decreasing information help make more of it available?

These are the things you're not responding to. Instead of that, you rant and rave about worried neighbors, using adjectives that you certainly wouldn't like to see thrown at your own projects. No... and, of course, if I, or Malafaya (or Millosh or GerardM or Eukesh or... add any other non-Volapükists) answer your rants we're just playing ping-pong. So you have the right to call us names, and we just have to sit and smile?... What a good neighbor!...

Yekrats, please consider this: maybe it's not all the neighbors that are worried about our rusting chevys. Maybe most of the neighborhood has better things to do: take care of a Wikipedia, for instance. Maybe it's only a few of the neighbors; the ones who are more "trigger-happy". You know, Mrs Grundy and her friends. Maybe what happens is that their new neighbors are poor: they don't have a big community, so they can't change things so fast. Most other neighbors just shrug their shoulders and go about their business, but Mrs Grundy and some of her friends think it's a shame that those "beggars" somehow managed to get a house in our elite neighborhood, so they try to find problems everywhere ('see their old cars? OK, they work, but they don't have any of the features of our Chevy's. Hey, why don't we claim that the absence of features is actually rust? Why don't we claim that they're rusty, and old, and have no wheels, and are a problem for the neighborhood? Many people don't like small cars, they'll go along with our, ahem, "interpretation".' Hm, some of their cars have real problems! Great! What? They're working on them? They'll soon all be fixed? Hey, let's not say this. Let's claim they can't do it!') Then Mrs Grundy and her friends write a letter to the mayor, thereby disturbing the neighborhood, who now has to stop and listen to them rant and rave, and especially to their new poor, small-community neighbors, who have to come to court to defend themselves instead of improving their Chevy's. So they make a scandal, and try to see if it brings the price of their property down. But it doesn't, so they just keep repeating it, hoping that someday it will. And when they manage to take many people to the town hall, we shout: 'unethical!' instead of asking ourselves if this doesn't mean that this question is not really so obvious as we had thought...

Yekrats: note that I am not arguing the case of community versus individual rights -- this is a true concern, as BirgitteSB has made it clear; but my point here is that short stubs, made with or without bots, do not bring any harm. And you haven't thus far shown any evidence of harm brought by them, to the project where they occur or to any other projects; only "issues" like interwiki links (which can be solved otherwise) were mentioned.

Why do you, Yekrats, keep repeating that? I know it is your opinion, but since this is a debate, I'm entitled to ask: how is your opinion on this topic different from bigotted prejudice? (For instance: my opinion is not simply prejudice, because of all the above points, which I'm ready to discuss.) I hope your future python script for answering us can deal with these questions... and that, unlike you, it will not replace discussion about real points and arguments with metaphors about rusty cars that only show anger and no thought. That would be a bad bot error... --Smeira 10:32, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You just destroyed my Python argument-script; thanks a lot. :-D

I want you to know that I am not angry. If wikistress gets too bad, I will walk away and not participate. I hope you are not getting angry either. I hope I am not provoking you to anger. If I go too far please let me know.

To adress your above numeric points, so you don't think I'm ignoring you or the issues:

"The 'small community' argument: you are too small to take care of so many articles." I see you and Malafaya working, constantly working, polishing those wonderful 100000 bot articles, removing English-ism and template errors and such. I just wish you had never uploaded all of those bot articles in the first place, and the two of you had actually used that energy to generate articles with REAL USEFUL CONTENT for the last eight months. I can only imagine how much better your Wiki would be.
The "bots vs. people" argument. I still maintain that a few bot additions are good for a community, but too many are disastrous.

Yet you want me to prove "harm." Harm is a hard thing to prove in an ephemeral thing like an on-line encyclopedia, however I think one indication that your 'bot stubs without much content' is harmful is when Jimbo Wales is embarrassed to use VO:WP in advertising when he gives his speeches about Wikipedia. It's harmful because it casts Wikipedia in a bad light. It's harmful because after I complained about the English problem months ago, you still have articles with full English sentences showing. It shows that you have serious problems with quality versus quantity, which is an image that Wikimedia constantly fights. We are constantly trying to show that we are a serious encyclopedia effort, worthy of respect. However, your shenanigans and intentional artificial number manipulation for advertising purposes is damaging that cause. If VO:WP was on an island by itself, you could generate whatever you want. I wouldn't care. But because you do it here, you damage the reputation of the English, and Esperanto, and all of our Wikis. Furthermore, our tolerance of your abuse indicates support. You were so greedy about quantity, so greedy to gimmick the numbers and game the system, that you threw quality totally out the window. So, I maintain that your lack of quality hurts the reputation of Wikipedia as a whole. More specifically, I think the lack of quality hurts the reputation of conlangs, which I care deeply about because of my involvement in EO:WP. I can't prove any of this, but I think if we were to take a random poll of Wikipedians (not hand-picked by Smeira) they would think that, but I don't have the time nor resources nor desire to do that.

You keep saying "A stub is a stub is a stub." That's not entirely true. A stub could be "Earth: Mostly harmless." and people would get annoyed at the lack of content. A stub which is just a database table is a bad one. A stub with five bits of database information glued together with a few words in your language is not much better. A user can be slightly annoyed by a bad encyclopedia entry and move on and usually find a better one, but it's hard when your encyclopedia is almost nothing but that.

You also tend to point to a bad article in other Wikipedias as evidence that other Wikipedias have problems too. The sad fact is that when you select an article or two out of another Wiki, it's an odd exception. When we find the problems in the Volapuk, it's pretty widespread and consistent problem. So, one must consider the SCALE of the problems you have, versus the number of editors you have to tackle those problems, plus the PAST HISTORY of you wanting to add more quantity rather than work on quality, and it creates a disturbing picture. We, the concerned citizens of WMF ask, how long will it go on? How bad does it get before we step in and do something about it? How much more will you abuse the system for advertising purposes?

Fact of the matter is, I don't really care that much. I would like for VO:WP to change their ways, and I can no longer support what you're doing, so I'm NOT changing my vote. I might consider changing it if you say, "I won't use bots to add any more articles until we fix what we have and add some actual content." I don't think you'll do that, because you don't see anything wrong with uploading thousands of articles of database lists stitched together with a few words of your language (or less!).

However, I've resigned that this vote is going to slide by unsuccessfully, thanks to your advertising for meat puppets to vote for your side. So, Volapuk Wiki will fester and stink here rather than somewhere else. My psychic abilities tell me you'll probably add a few hundred thousand more bot-articles to thumb your nose at the WMF, and then someone else will complain, we'll probably be back here doing this again in April. -- Yekrats 17:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just for the sake of not avoiding a question, I must address: "how is your opinion on this topic different from bigotted prejudice?" I am certainly not bigoted or prejudiced against VO:WP in any way. If my own Wiki was acting this way, I'd be arguing for the same thing. (And I have argued that there, becoming known as a bit of a forigado-maniulo there. You see, there are some preservationists there too, so I can't delete everything that I want. I am not treating VO:WP special at all, or any different than I would treat EO. If someone were to force EO:WP to chop back its bot additions, I would not oppose it. I honestly think VO would be a healthier, more solid Wiki after being cut back, or even cutting back part of the bot edits. -- Yekrats 20:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yekrats! I'm glad I managed to "destroy" (in the good sense of the word) at least one of your arguments! :-) Well, you do come out angry, in your choice of metaphors, and I, as a human being, react to that. But since you say you're not angry, I'll accept your word and ignore the apparent 'anger' in the metaphors you chose. Who needs wikistress?... (Of course, I won't mind if you select metaphors that are a bit nicer... Using fewer "SCREAMING CAPITALS", as a good friend of mine once called this style, would also help somewhat... avoiding words like "fester and stink" might also give a better impression.) Now, on to your points:

First, we do have longer articles, and we continue to add them all the time; you've probably seen the last three or four ones in the recent changes, and if you didn't, just look up the desired articles category). We could have added more longer articles, if we hadn't uploaded stubs and started correcting them. (And also if there weren't discussions like this one to participate...) But we think it is worthwhile to correct them -- because they do add useful information that had never been available in this language before. We're doing it more enthusiastically now, thanks to your words of encouragement, but it's always been a goal. You don't approve this and you think we should use our time differently. Fine. People differ about what they want to use their time for. There are people who probably think Esperanto is not a good thing to 'lose time' on (can you guess what my mother said when I told her I was learning Esperanto? :^)), and worse yet if you're working without pay on an Esperanto online encyclopedia ('if you must work for free, why not do it at the English Wikipedia, the one which is "really" useful?' etc... You know the story). But you don't agree, so you continue to be an Esperantist and a Vikipediisto. Likewise, we think we're doing something worthwhile (and the reasons for that are scattered through this page); if you disagree, fine. Don't do it. You can go pursue 'worthier' goals. We want to do it; we will do it. And: this is only one of the things we will do, together with writing longer articles and improving them. As we are already doing. Our Wiki is already good enough as it is, and it will get better.
On possible harm: you mention several points:
1. "Jimbo Wales is embarrassed." Well, are you, Jimbo? You didn't say so; Yekrats is interpreting your words. Now, in case Jimbo is embarrassed: he may be wrong. I have said why I think there is more reason to be embarrassed about a flawed parameter like number-of-articles; I don't know if he's read my words or thought about them, but I think they need to be taken into account. After all, he's not infallible. If he were embarrassed by the existence of an Esperanto Wikipedia ('what for? these people speak other languages!') -- I'm not saying he is, I'm saying if he were -- would you agree and then stop the Vikipedio? No: you would show your arguments and try to convince him. Just as I did.
2. "It casts Wikipedia in a bad light." Again: where? As Purodha said on your policy proposal page: it seems people want accurate information and don't care about bot-authors. "Anyone can edit" casts Wikipedia in a worse light, for most non-Wikipedian users, than "there are lots of (bot-created or not) stubs". Maybe it is only in the opinion of exclusionist or deletionist Wikipedians, rather than in the opinion of the general public, that this 'bad light' appears.
3. "There is still English after my complaints". Yes, as I pointed out, correcting errors is a never-ending task... And if the proportion of errors is less than 0,5%, I think we're doing better than most other projects... Should I repeat the English and Esperanto examples? When I do searches, I find hundreds of texts in the Vikipedio with hidden English texts -- in cases like eo:Sankta Roĥo, which I helped translate into Esperanto, the text was even not hidden (by mistake; signs that the author had tried to hide were still there: an unmatched '-->' symbol). And it's been there for months, even years. Is this a problem? Yes, but you are solving it -- you jumped and corrected that template error in eo:Amerika bizono as soon as I pointed it out. Well done! You could have used the time to start or improve another article, but you preferred to correct an error -- which I certainly approve of. Now, on to the other ones! There are lots of hidden English to get rid of, as in eo:Aberdeen (Vaŝingtonio), eo:Dinosaŭra Renesanco, eo:Arkeopterigo, eo:La tiranosaŭro en la populara kulturo, (what? lots of fully empty sections on this one; what a rusty Chevy!), eo:Kristiana anarkiismo, eo:Armilo de amasa detruo (where part of the English text wasn't even hidden), eo:Retefekto, eo:Efiko de Doppler... these have already been waiting for months! I don't know exactly how many they are in the Vikipedio, and how much work that would take you; in the Vükiped case, we have only about 0,5% of errors to deal with, and they're disappearing rather fast; as you yourself said, we're working hard on it. The eo.wp community is bigger; it could certainly do the same, too. I've already given you guys some help with eo:Sankta Roĥo.
"Damage the reputation... we're constantly fighting the quantity-vs-quality battle". I repeat what I said above: the battles I see being fought have more to do with "anyone can edit". I've seen criticisms of Pokémon characters as "frivolous", but note: it was the topic, not the quality of the article (which was often quite good) that was criticized, much less whether or not it was a bot-created article. So: I challenge your claim that the presence of stubs -- or more specifically bot-created stubs -- has ever caused any serious problem for Wikipedia (e.g. been used as an argument against Wikipedia as a whole), except among certain kinds of Wikipedians (exclusionists, deletionists, etc.). (Of course, you could always try to shout "shame!" in public to see if some journalist would bite the bait -- but then it would be your fault, not the bot stubs'.)
"you threw quality out the window". Again: define quality. By any standards I can think of, deleting stubs won't improve it; deleting them will only decrease it. If "quality" includes, with any weight you want to give it, also completeness of coverage, then any stubs that add information are increasing quality, even if slightly. As GerardM keeps asking, how could a stub with some information be worse than a blank page?... We could, and are also, working on longer articles; we encourage them. They contribute individually a lot more to quality. But stubs are also OK. They make their contributions too.
"gimmick numbers and game the system": you mean: attracting more willing Wikipedians to contribute to vo.wp. I didn't "game the system", since I didn't 'win' against anyone. It is you guys who keep looking at number-of-articles as if it were your Space Invaders highscore; I call this "gaming the system"... "90 000 articles done! now, let's go towards 100 000!", I read in the Vikipedio. Hm! so it wouldn't be better to just work on those 90 000 and further increase their quality? Most of them could use some improving... Why not ban the creation of new articles till all the ones you already have go at least one notch up the quality scale? After all, quality is much more important than quantity, and new articles are usually below average in quality.
"I maintain that your lack of quality hurts the reputation of Wikipedia as a whole (and conlangs in particular)". Yes, and the en:Flat Earth Society maintains that the Earth is flat, but that doesn't make it so. If you can't prove it -- by pooling the Wikipedians (why only Wikipedians? Why not also casual users or readers in general?), or other things that you don't have the time to do -- then you shouldn't claim it. It's speculation. I'll offer the opposing speculation that people will consider copyright violations, or accuracy of information, to be much more important issues than the number of stubs. (I'd frankly be interested in the result of such a poll; I'm willing to help anyone who wants to set up a procedure for doing this. Random e-mails maybe?)
"A stub is a stub is a stub". The point here is not that all stubs are good, but that stubs should be judged as stubs, by what information they have, independently of their origin. An "Earth: mostly harmless" stub is bad, no matter if a bot created it or not, no matter if it's the only one or one out of a hundred thousand. A stub which is just a database table already has some information. One that has some text in there is, as you said, a little better. A user getting anoyed by this stub is an user who was not searching for specific information, but who was just browsing to pass the time (to 'educate him/herself'; see my comments on the "Aesthetic school" in your proposal page); the odds are s/he won't be doing it in the Volapük Wikipedia (unless s/he's a Volapükist, at which point I assume s/he will be glad to see so much information unexpectedly available in this language. Did I mention I got messages from some Volapükists telling me exactly that?) Anyway, there are some 50-60 other projects where s/he'd get even less. Are they also "damaging the reputation of Wikipedia"? I think not, and for the same reason: people who just want to browse for fun won't go there (the speakers of these languages usually either don't have or use computers, or are happy to see something in their languages at last).
"The SCALE of the problem": If the problem is the stubs, then all the arguments above apply: the stubs aren't a problem, they're simply bits of information made available to speakers of this language (see all the above arguments). If the problme is the translation and copying errors, then the scale is rather small: 0,5%. I think it's comparable to other Wikipedias, if you take e.g. mistranslations, mistakes, and inaccuracies into account. As for texts in English, well, as I pointed out, there are other such cases that look similarly massive: the number of Esperanto articles with hidden English texts is actually impressive -- far more than I had expected at first, I must admit. Could it be also about 0,5%? As for the number of people: isn't the real question whether or not the problem (0,5% errors) is being addressed and can be solved? I think, for vo.wp, the answer to both questions is undeniably yes. Look at all articles tagged as, for instance, "unsourced" in the English Wikipedia; when I look at how slowly these texts are becoming "sourced" (most have been waiting for months or more than a year); and when I think about the huge number of active editors there, I think we're doing pretty well at vo.wp.
"HISTORY of preferring quantity to quality": Funny, why not ask us directly? 'Inferring from history' is what you do when other sources are unavailable or dead... and we're quite alive and available here. You didn't ask, but anyway you deserve an answer. No, adding lots and lots of new stubs is not a priority; we may add some (to round off the countries which are still "open", like Romania), but not really very many (say, around 1-2% of what we now have?). Not because we think this would be bad; but frankly, I want to do other things now. We're working on improving the stubs we now have (as I mentioned in a counterproposal to you on this very page, without getting any reactions from you...), as in e.g. vo:Geban:Smeira/Voböp; you probably still won't like the result, but you'll have to agree it is better. We're working on the internal structure (categories and their interrelations). We're working on the List of articles that every Wikipedia should have; afterwards we'll try the "translation of the week" you once mentioned (in the first closure proposal). And we're working on specific thematic interests (Malafaya wants to do articles on music, Robert likes computing (and maybe also Hillgentleman), I like paleonthology, astronomy, literature, and the history of Volapük and Volapükists... Languages would also be a good topic for me.). As far as I can see, that's probably what will go on happening (+ correcting errors, fighting vandalism, etc.). Sorry to frustrate your psychic abilities! (Well, not really so sorry; and if you're sincere, you shouldn't be either.)
"I might consider changing it if you say, I won't use bots to add any more articles until we fix what we have and add some actual content." Really? That does agree with the goals I mentioned in the previous paragraph -- if you agree that improving stubs by bot (as in vo:Geban:Smeira/Voböp) is improving, and if you'll allow Romania to get finished. As you say, I don't think uploading more bot articles per se is bad; but I do want to do other things too. If you really meant what you said, you have a deal.
"I am certainly not bigoted or prejudiced against VO:WP in any way." Oh, no, that's not what I mean. As I said on the talk page of your policy proposal, I don't think you're treating vo.wp any different from other wikis. No; your prejudice is against bot-created articles. You think they're bad, but you don't give any reasons for thinking they're worse than manually created stubs (which are everywhere legion); and you refuse to see the (little but existing) information they contribute as adding to "quality"; both opinions are arguably wrong (or at least dependant on a specific definition of "quality" and whether the goal of Wikipedia is that of the Aesthetic or of the Pragmatic school, as I call them on your policy proposal page), but you don't admit that and you don't give further evidence or arguments. So I call it prejudice (i.e. a belief that won't discuss its basis). Furthermore, the existence of many people with a less strict opinion on bot-created articles (even in the Esperanto Wikipedia, as you said) apparently doesn't make you wonder if limiting bot-created articles isn't really a polemic topic best left for project-internal policy -- anything that should be at such a high level ought to be a near-consensus issue, like copyright violations or NPOVs. Or else, why not propose that some philosphy -- "deletionism", "exclusionism", etc. -- simply become WMF policy? Why not take these philosophical differences here and propose a vote?...

Well, as you say, maybe we'll be here in April. Or, I don't know: maybe the stewards will think this "closure or almost closure" trick has been tried often enough and stop it next time. You never know. Or at least maybe you'll feel you have better things to do, like erasing or translating the hidden English texts in the Vikipedio. Whatever happens -- I won't throw the first stone here. --Smeira 03:10, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"10. 'I might consider changing it if you say, I won't use bots to add any more articles until we fix what we have and add some actual content.' Really? That does agree with the goals I mentioned in the previous paragraph -- if you agree that improving stubs by bot (as in vo:Geban:Smeira/Voböp) is improving, and if you'll allow Romania to get finished. As you say, I don't think uploading more bot articles per se is bad; but I do want to do other things too. If you really meant what you said, you have a deal."

I certainly meant what I said, but I don't think adding more bot-articles about Romania (or any other new geographic bot articles) would be helpful to your situation. I have no problem with you fixing current articles by bot, as long as you ("in good faith") don't spin the wheels of SmeiraBot in order to try to intentionally break the "Depth" statistic. But -- add more stubs by bot??? (Yekrats surpresses the urge to yell, "ARE YOU CRAZY???") How many are you planning, and how do you think this will help you? -- Yekrats 21:12, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding more Romanian stubs is not a necessity; but since about 50% of the Romanian city and village (municipality) stubs have been copied to vo.wp (those in districts Alba to Ilfov), one feels the need to finish it (i.e. by adding those in districts Maramureş to Vrancea). The actual amount is about 1,000, at most 1,500. If, however, this becomes a point of contention, I will not insist: let's say that new bot-created stubs are added only after, say, at least 90% of the extant stubs have been improved (to e.g. the level of the one I had been working on). Romania may remain torn in half while it happens, and be made whole only after that. (My expectation is that this would be 3-5 months.) Or we might add the stubs manually. Whatever people find less offensive.

Notice that in order to manage, correct mistakes, update, add redirects etc., the depth parameter will be affected. I was the first one to mention this fact in the first closure proposal, and, if I am to use a bot to improve 100,000 articles, I don't see how this could be avoided. I am not trying to raise the depth value, but even with the new definition (which I helped create), vo.wp should be reaching 7 or more by the middle of the year. Depth is kind of okayish, but it's not so much better than number-of-articles -- see the discussion on depth 2.0 on the talk page of the List of Wikipedias. I hope this won't be a big issue? --Smeira 13:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some thoughts about the future of Wikipedia

I won't vote here since Wikimedia is not a democracy. Nothing has happend, when rambot at en: was active, nothing has happend after bots have been active in nl:, nothing has happend when eo: was growing, and so on. Well, and nothing has happend after vo: rose from a few thousands of articles to one hundred thousand.

Yeah, why don't treat them all the same way? When en: had the right to create 32,000 articles (growing from 55k to 87k), then vo: must have the same right. Thus it has to be right that it grew from ... well, I don't know, maybe 2,000 to 112,000 by bots.

Well, this is simply the perverted point of view from someone who hasn't understood yet what the difference between an encyclopedia and a database is. Sadly one will find this kind of people in a lot of the Wikipedia projects. And everytime one asks to delete bot created "articles" there's at least someone who will say that wouldn't be fair. It wasn't fair that the Lower Sorbian people had to wait more than two years from the first post until the Wikipedia was created while some of the already existing projects were running their bots at full speed. It isn't fair that the Volapük Wikisource can't move from the international Wikisource to an own project because the interface isn't fully translated. Actually it is fair to delete bot created articles when they won't see updates. Municipalities merge, some grow and reach city status while others get abandoned. (I could name a few, someone would update the articles, the problem would still exist, though.)

I guess even this time nothing will happen and the database freaks will win over the people who are seriously interested in a free encyclopedia project. The Vükiped could easily move from .wikipedia.org to .wikia.com without losing any contents, even the [[vo: ...]] alias could exist between any Wikipedia and a wikia based Vükiped. Suddenly there could be even a cash-flow through advertisments.

But as I already said, Vükiped won't move, bot created "articles" won't get deleted, the project will not be closed. What actually will happen is this situation: One Wikipedia will reach the article count of 5 million before the end of this decade. It won't be the English Wikipedia (they would have to write ~2,8 million articles in 23 months), but it will be the Vükiped. With my help. And after I hit enter to submit the 5 millionth article by hand, I will talk into the cameras and microphones of news reporters from all over the world and I will use the well known quote with a minor change: "I chose to run these bots not because it is hard but because it is easy!" And after that I'll thank all the people who have donated money to Wikipedia because "you keep this project running." I'm sure Wikipedia editors world wide will love it, no matter if they prefer en: or zh:, de: or ar:, ... --32X 15:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC) PS: Of course I will thank the Wikimedia Foundation because without these hard working people a project like w:vo: would've not been possible.[reply]

You said, "...nothing has happend when eo: was growing..." Something *did* happen when EO:WP was growing by bots. We (the EO:WP community) finally came to our senses and stopped! Since August '07, EO:WP has called a moratorium on new bot articles, and dealing with the consequences of our own bot use. Dig under the surface there and you will see it, but we are working with it the best we can, and hopefully after going bot-free for a while we can. Yes, despite the fact that EO:WP used bots (about 35000 articles by my estimation, and too much in my opinion) but we also have backed it up with many high quality articles, and a focus on the core vital articles as a foundation for success. I wouldn't say EO:WP is yet a success, but we are striving for quality and to be taken seriously now. If you compare the graphs of articles created between the Esperanto and the Volapuk you will see the difference between a Wikipedia growing somewhat organically and one that is grown totally artificially. EO:WP is a really spectacular effort when one considers our small community. -- Yekrats 19:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hope 32X post just was an hypothetical satirical post in order to make a point (I really fear that something like this will happen, regardless if it is done with a satirical motivation or a motivation like Smeira's). Regarding eo.wp: I think eo.wp compared to vo.wp clearly highlights the difference between thoughtfull and stubborn. Although eo.wp's problem is one order of magnitude smaller than vo.wp's and although eo.wp's community (and thus its potential fixing errors) is probably two orders of magnitude larger than vo.wp eo.wp community came themselves to the conclusion that bot articles are a severe problem for their Wikipedia and consequently made themselves clear decissions and are working very hard solving their bot article problem in different ways (deleting of bad articles, improving of below average texts). Arnomane 21:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Arnomane! I don't think there's any reason to fear 5 million stubs overnight; as far as I know, this would take a concerted effort by many people and many computers to be done. I don't think it's feasible. Regarding eo.wp: it's of course their decision to see their bot-created articles as a problem; if they think so, then let them handle it as they see fit. But that doesn't mean they're right, or that whatever policy they agree on should be automatically extended to everybody. (If Yekrats 3-to-1 proportion is accepted as a general WMF policy that everybody should obey, it would make bot-created articles possible in de.wp, and you surely wouldn't want that...). Note also that your point about eo.wp sounds like: they can decide as long as they do what I (and others like me) think they should do. If they didn't... then we'd have to do something about it. --Smeira 04:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Once again you showed that you're not interested in any compromise but your own opinion. Furthermore you seem to have only a little understanding of de.wikipedia and rules in general. de.wikipedia won't allow large scale bot articles even if nobody else objects. Furthermore nobody has to go to the limits of a rule. But I guess you try to prevent that I can find a compromise with others (that probably could hurt you). Arnomane 11:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Compromise? You still haven't answered any of my questions; you haven't said anything about why bot-created stubs are bad; etc. etc. etc... That doesn't look like being ready to compromise to me. I don't know much about de.wp, that's true, but I do know about rules in general. It seems you are the opposite: you know about de.wp, but nothing else. If de.wp does that, fine, it's their project. Others don't, and they aren't wrong. I agree with Millosh: it's very arrogant of you to tell others that only your rules (de.wp) are good and should be followed. --Smeira 14:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 32X, nice to see you here! Let me try to address the points you raise. I don't know if this will convince you -- judging by your language, nothing probably would -- but what's a debate for if we give up arguments?...

Nothing has happened... Yes, and there even were proposals for translating rambot early on. One possible explanation is that most people didn't really feel afraid of that; maybe there isn't anything really bad in that. After all, all of this happened... and Wikipedia is still here.
The difference between an encyclopedia and a database. On this point: Yes, what is the purpose of Wikipedia? GerardM's text: providing information when there is little or none shows a viewpoint different from yours (I assume), but equally idealistic and worthwhile. I think that the English, German, French etc. Wikipedias can aspire to be great Renaissance projects with hundreds of thousands of very good articles (they aren't that yet, but they can realistically aspire at being that); but small-community Wikipedias can't and shouldn't. If they exist at all, it must be for other reasons. I think that's why we have Wiki-autonomy rather than a much stricter set of rules here, right? That's why this is not Citizendium, but Wikipedia.
It wasn't fair that the Lower Sorbian people had to wait more than two years from the first post until the Wikipedia was created while some of the already existing projects were running their bots at full speed. Why? They had to wait because the WMF had criteria that they should fulfill. What's wrong with that, and how does relate to how other Wikipedias grow? The English and German Wikipedias created many more articles than vo.wp in the same period of two years; does that make the Lower Sorbian situation unfair? I really don't see your point here.
It isn't fair that the Volapük Wikisource can't move from the international Wikisource to an own project because the interface isn't fully translated. Again, I don't think it isn't "fair"; it's just the WMF policy. What is your point? (Note, by the way, that if the Volapük Wikipedia has already had conditional approval, it is only because I worked on it and made the request, after the Multilingual Wikisource sysops suggested that I do so; at first I didn't want to -- everything was fine there -- but they convinced me to try. And the interface is being translated into Volapük; just check the Betawiki statistics. Actually faster than many other languages.)
Actually it is fair to delete bot created articles when they won't see updates. Municipalities merge, some grow and reach city status while others get abandoned. If nobody wants to work on them, I agree it would be fair. But if they are being updated, they why? It's always better to update than to delete. Did you notice that vo.wp updated vo: Großschwabhausen and vo:Meuselwitz after they incorporated Hohlstedt and Wintersdorf respectively on Dec. 2007, and vo:Aschersleben when Drohndorf and Mehringen became part of it on Jan 2008? (The changes were done then, not now; some even before this proposal was made. Not everybody has been this quick: the Esperanto Wikipedia, for example, hasn't noticed the change in Aschersleben yet; they only mention inclusions up to Wilsleben in 2006.) I won't claim we see everything at vo.wp, but we aren't blind either. More help would be welcome -- but we're certainly trying.
One Wikipedia will reach the article count of 5 million before the end of this decade... Hey 32X, you're speculating here, and you're not asking the people involved: us. If you look up my answer to Yekrats' opinions, you'll see we don't plan to do that. (Note also this would be technicallyl impossible: it would take dozens of people working in parallel with many computers 24 hours a day to upload 5 million stubs in 23 months. Nobody can do that, and nobody wants either.) Here, 32X, you're just voicing your anger. Nothing of what you say has anything to do with reality. You mention an impossibly exaggerated example just because it's better to attack than reality... What a pity! You can do better than that. (By the way, I have donated, too; and if I understand the costs well, my single donation would be enough to keep all those vo.wp stubs on for another century... no need to thank other people!). --Smeira 04:09, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

1. Good to know, that'll help me on my way to help vo to reach the top.

3. Count the word "fair" on this page and you'll understand why I have mentioned it with two examples.

4. It's a shame that a Wikipedia with over 100.000 articles can't provide a nearly 100 % ready translation of the interface.

5. Good to know, but there are still some municipalities waiting since some months.

6. I won't look up your answer, this page has about 350 kB text. Anyway, I'm not speculating, I just told the community that I've found a way to earn my 15 minutes of fame. Since I have already edited in vo: and since Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" I think I don't need to ask Vükiped's community. I know they'll love my stubs since they'll be a great resource for information. I think time has come for me to plant some seeds of wisdom at Vükiped.

Nobody can do that – Sure? Looks like you're really asking us to prove you wrong. Top of the hill, here wü come! 32X 11:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would be against this, because it's disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point... so you should fit right in and be welcomed with open arms at VO:WP! -- Yekrats 11:42, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yekrats. No, it doesn't seem like he's planning to do that. He's doing satyre, without arguments. And you're using angry words again, aren't you? And making claims about our reaction without asking us first. Sigh!... --Smeira 14:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 32X. Looks like you're angry; you're just dropping ironic snippets without really arguing. Anyway, someone has to, so...

1. Nobody wants to do that. Even you don't. You're just kidding.

2. Nothing to say here? Do you agree with GerardM?

3. I have; it occurs a lot. Still I don't see your point. Your examples mention people following the rules, and you say this isn't fair? Either (a) the rules weren't applied correctly, or (b) the rules themselves are not good. Which are you claiming, and why?

4. It is not a shame that a community with about 5 people hasn't produced 100% translations yet. Most communities of this size haven't. If you look up the Betawiki statistics, you'll see we're doing better than most. (Did you notice that the Esperanto Wikipedia, with its much larger community, also doesn't have even 100% of the core messages translated? In fact, in four out of three groups, vo.wp does better than eo.wp. That may explain why, after almost a year of inactivity, Yekrats suddenly felt inspired to translate more messages in the last two days... Yet another contribution of vo.wp to help eo.wp!

5. They'll be taken care of -- assuming, of course, that we won't be distracted by such proposals every other month... By the way, don't forget to compare us with small-community wikipedias as to speed of updating -- we're certaily not de.wp. You'll see we're not doing badly.

6. I've already given you the answer, you don't need to look it up: we don't plan to do that. If you do, of course you need to talk to us first. Ignoring the community is always bad. Anyway, you're either joking, or just threatening with vandalism. Both bad things to do, especially for someone with your record at de.wp.

32X, you're just angry and frustrated. You don't like bot-created stubs, but you don't seem to have arguments against them. You don't want to discuss, just to joke. OK, so be it. Anyway: Wikipedia is still there... there is no threat... --Smeira 14:28, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Smeira, he seems to be using your own ridiculous arguments against you. Why wouldn't 32X's "articles" be welcomed at VO:WP? What rationale would you have to delete anything that he put there? The only way he's threatening with vandalism is if Smeirabot's additions are considered vandalism, too. He's threatening to simply continue SmeiraBot's previous good work! I'm sure we should "assume good faith" and just verify 32XBots additions are just as good as SmeiraBot's. And even if not, as long as they have some kernel of information, they are still good as a "stub is a stub is a stub." -- Yekrats 12:11, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not really, Yekrats, because he doesn't mean what he says -- it is as if I started a "Proposal for Radical Cleanup of the Esperanto Wikipedia" and asked for special powers to delete stubs there also using you people's (lack of) arguments. I would then be doing a parody of something I don't believe in. If 32X's articles are indeed so -- if they contain relevant, correct, and encyclopedic information (e.g. found also in other projects like eo.wp), I would have in principle nothing against them -- but he must first follow local vo.wp policies (including the one of focusing on using bots to improve already extant stubs -- the suggestion you made and I accepted, remember?...) and also talk to us first. For the time being he doesn't even have an account at vo.wp; that's not very community-like. He must also be ready to defend his work here and to fight against people like you, who would start screaming about rusty cars as soon as he "went to work". If he isn't ready to do that, then he's just being a hypocrite; or then he's deliberately trying to harm vo.wp by attracting more attacks at Meta -- and that's enough reason for a block, IMHO. --Smeira 20:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I must jump in defense of Yekrats: I was the one who pointed BetaWiki to him after I saw Yekrats translating the interface in the local wiki EO.WP. It's always better to reuse translations for other sites than just keeping them in a single wiki. Malafaya 16:08, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, my mistake then. Sorry Yekrats :-(... --Smeira 19:51, 21 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No big deal. No offense taken. -- Yekrats 15:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Third round? A question to admins/stewards

The "vague threat" of a third anti-Volapuk-stubs proposal (or fourth, if Yekrats' policy proposal is placed in the same family) has already been voiced above. I therefore thought it in order to ask admins and stewards here: would a third similar proposal (without the move-to-incubator part, or perhaps with fewer deletions) actually be possible, or would it be stopped on the grounds of (a) violation of Wiki-autonomy (the two previous proposals clearly show there's no consensus), and (b) precedents (the basic idea has already been discussed twice)? --195.73.249.73 12:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC) --Smeira 14:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some further thoughts about the future of Wikipedia

Well, we're getting concerned predictions about the future of Wikipedia now. Where will it all end. Since others are already doing this, I thought I could offer my own 5 cents' worth.

Wikipedia is now a success. There is still some opposition: "anyone" can edit? Are you crazy? That can't possibly generate any quality! If they get the dates of birth and death right, that's already a lot! So these articles are beeing written by geeky teenagers who should have been doing their homeworks instead? And without pay? Eeeeewww! (A datum from the work of popular culture, from an epise of en:The Office US I watched a few days ago: John Krasinski mentions some strange fact, and then adds: "as confirmed by Wikipedia!" Cut to a facial close-up of Jenna Fisher, who bursts into laughter.)

But all in all, Wikipedia is a success. Jimbo Wales, once a visionary defending a risky idea, can now smile broadly. More and more people consult and use Wikipedia, delighted by how easy it is to find information in the form of well-written articles with good sources. The content is mentioned all over the web, lots of other web sites copy it, google has Wikipedia among its first hits... It certainly works.

But now there is a new threat: the invasion of the zombie articles! The bot-created stubs who rose from their tombs, and are now slowly devouring the hard work of hundreds of thousands of dedicated, idealistic Wikipedians. Ah..it...hurts...must..eat...brains...to...stop...pain.....FA articles!...must...eat.... These bot-created stubs are belittling and nullifying the hard work of hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia editors! We have to stop them before it gets too late! Or else... else... (we shudder, trying not to imagine the unthinkable consequences).

And then we wake up, drink some water with sugar to calm down, wipe our sweaty foreheads and look around. Everything looks like before. We check articles like de:Philosophie: good, still there. Nothing bad has happened to it. But we know there's a threat, don't we? Yes: because we have a wonderful means to see it. A wonder of modern statistical science, the fabulous parameter: number-of-articles! Hip hip hooray!...

Yes, what a fantastic parameter. An article like de:Philosophie and an article like de:Streator are counted as exactly the same: one point. All the excellent work of editing, writing good content, adding sources, discussing changes on the talk page, painstakingly searching for new formulations that are non-POV and still give all the information, adding all the useful links, adding illustrative pictures, making the whole look like an organic unit... all of this gets nothing in the final highscore. All of this counts as one point, just like the contribution made by the person of genious who created de:Streator, this piece of immortal prose. To say nothing of all the infrastructure work in all the other namespaces -- all those useful pages that never get counted in the highscore. And people are concerned that vo.wp stubs could obscure the good work of others?... Looks like Wikipedians were already doing a good job of that without vo.wp.

But these articles are so ugly-looking! And the proportion is so bad! And they're gaming the system! It's so ethically questionable! Rusty cars next to our beautiful machines! (Hmmm... didn't they have something to say in their defense? Something about... what was it again? do you remember? ah! small-community projects having necessarily different goals, since they can't produce an all-encompassing encyclopedia? and making information for the first time available in a different language being by itself a worthy goal? Ha! that's all demagogy. Of course what they want is The Highscore! Five Million Articles! Isn't that the only thing they could possibly want?)

Where have all the sane people gone?...

Why not discuss arguments and reasons? Why not talk about the reasons why a certain philosophy -- inclusionism, exclusionism, eventualism, etc. -- should become WMF policy rather than a wiki-internal affair? Why not make empirically verifiable questions, discuss actual harm (with examples) and ways of addressing it, discuss what Wikipedia should be for small-community projects, discuss the goals of wiki-autonomy and what the WMF policy should be? Yekrats' policy proposal was a good first step; but why get angry if people present different viewpoints? Why not see what the underlying differences are, and think about them?

Will anybody react? Even to this post? No... Or then, it will be something like:

Arnomane: Smeira, once again you have proved that you don't want to solve your problems cause this question have been solved long ago everybody knows this. You dont want compromise you just want more many cloudy long words. You dont know de.wikipedia and of course if de.wikipedia doesn't like bot-stubs then nobody can like bot-stubs and you should know de.wikipedia better and stop to accuse it. Every project should follow de.wikipedia rules! It's all so obvious!

32X: Yes, Smeira, what you say is sooo funny, I'll remember it when I write my 5-millionth stub and get my well-earned 15 minutes of fame. It's a shame to do so many stubs and then not have all your BetaWiki messages translated. Of course these things are logically connected! What? Many other projects didn't either? Ahn, but in their case it's not a shame. And besides Wikipedia is going under, a Götterdämmerung under a deluge of bot-created stubs. They didn't do anything when the Dutch used bots, now see all the harm this has caused! Ah, it's so funny, hahaha lalala...

Yekrats: Yes, Smeira, you're so ethically questionable, you go getting MEAT PUPPETS to protect your RUSTY CARS and invade the Town Hall, but you've got articles in OTHER FRIGGIN' LANGUAGES and SmeiraBot has a perverted POV problem! And I AM NOT ANGRY! Your community is TOO SMALL to take care of this! And you're GAMING THE SYSTEM while we are not, even though the reason for proposing the cleanup is basically the highscores! If you had the same proportion but only 1/10 of the total of articles, nobody would care! Neither am I prejudiced against vo.wp, only against (too many) bot-created stubs. And I'm a moderate! Just compare me to Arnomane! Who needs to prove harm? Isn't it obvious that there is harm, even in the absence of harm? Come on, you vo.wp people, all I want is more good articles! My policy proposal lets you keep some of your bot stubs, so don't overwhelm it with your trigger-happy comments! Hmmm... most people there aren't from vo.wp. But that doesn't mean anything, now does it? Smeira, why do you refuse to see reason?

Oh God... And maybe it will all start again in another few months. So you see where Wikipedia is going: becoming less of an interesting place where new paths are exploited, and more of a do-as-we-did-or-then-we-hit-you place, like so many others. Indeed, the future does look bleak. --195.73.249.73 11:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)--Smeira 11:53, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My complimetns Smeria, what a clever essay of yours! Come on, let's stop wasting our time here and get back to business. Even the most agitated anti-Vükiped activists must agree on the fact that there are worse things in life than too big a share of botted stubs in a Wikipedia. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 14:01, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It would be already a good starting point if you just try out the MediaWiki preview function (or learn how to stay logged in permanent). This would help a bit to conduct a more clear discussion. And of course this is a pattern: SmeiraBots articles are anything but carefully created. They contain numerous errors that could have been easily detected by let us say checking just every 200th bot article... Anyways EOD here. Arnomane 22:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there's a lot I don't know yet. If you're willing to teach me, I can teach you some English in exchange... you could use some work on your causal and temporal conjunctions or verb conjugations (and your style and choice of words could use some improvement too). As for the errors on every 200th bot article, I'm sure you've seen that we've done that and that they're being corrected. I don't think you'll admit that, however. You need to believe vo.wp is only bad. Anyway, EOD for me too -- at least till you come up with some arguments rather than rehashed prejudice. See ya! --Smeira 19:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(discussion moved)

I as the initator discontinue my request it as it is stuck out of various reasons. I will take points out of this discusion here and will come up with an improved request after a phase of collaborative preparation. Thanks for sharing your opinions here; the discussion here is now closed but not the topic itself. So please don't comment here anylonger. Arnomane 22:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you think that a next proposal given your current ideas will be any better received ? What are you going to do to make your next proposal more palateable ? Also your thread can be seen as harasment. I propose that you leave this subject for at least half a year if you want to prevent your actions to be perceived as such. GerardM 23:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You are only the starter, not the King of Meta-Wiki. 555 19:37, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, although I am a supporter, there should be a change in the proposal. Especially moving it to Incubator. Furthermore, I suggest that when you finish counting the votes please don't forget that some of the opposition votes are from annonimous ones, and maybe some of them are even sockpuppets. Please check it. -- Felipe Aira 08:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget to do it for the support votes too, which are perhaps just as likely to have the same problems. --Smeira 01:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Felipe: "counting the vote" <-- I hope that we have advanced beyond that. Since we all dislike sock-puppets, weighing the arguement is preferrable. Note that there are far more supports-without-reasons than opposes-without-reasons, that would make them in better cases weak, and in worse cases doubtful and rash. Hillgentleman 05:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]