Be Excellent To Each Other

From Chris Abbott, posting on yakyak: "What started as a debate over the capitalisation of the group "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE" (capitalised because that message is capitalised on the C64) turns into an all out war...

Read it and wonder at the logic of the Wikipedia admins involved..."

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=80273

The notable C64 covers band. Deleted for not 'being notable enough'. Yet another display the kind of ridiculous bloody-mindedness on behalf of so-called, self-instated Wikipedia 'editors', that makes me have no desire to ever contribute to, or even take Wikipedia remotely seriously as a reliable reference source.

Idiots.

Citation needed. Aside from a few geeks, who has heard of them? I certainly haven't and some people might consider me to be a minor fan of 8 bit computing.

I had an MP3 of a live performance of them doing the music to Out Run which was quite good. Not sure if I heard of them through this site or maybe WoS though.

I've heard of them but only from YakYak. The wikipedia editor might well be a dick but as far as I can see they were basically just asking for proper, non-conflict-of-interest verification of their "notability" and it was never forthcoming.

Bit pointless trying to incite a few geeks to boycott wikipedia anyway I'd have thought.

Were they the people that did a Cannon Fodder cover using video game controllers?

I have read the discussion.

I'm not sure if I agree with the deletion of the article or not. According to Wikipedia's rules it was borderline, but I just don't understand why they think Wikipedia would be better with less stuff on it.
As long as the article is factually correct, I don't see the problem.

Thing is, there's the entire rest of the internet to use to describe and publicise a thing that you are interested or involved in.

If the thing isn't notable then I agree it shouldn't be in an encyclopedia, otherwise you get everyone writing about their own stuff or about themselves, and with the best will in the world that is not an encyclopedia.

I've started a couple of articles about pretty obscure things myself, and had one of them [similarly brusquely] questioned and deleted by admins. Once I added verifiable sources, all was well.

What's a verifiable source that something is "notable" though? Someone saying "this is notable" on an independent website?

It tends to need to be a news article on a website that is well known and properly independent.

For example, I dug one up from I think the New York Times archive - clearly that's pretty notable.

In this case it sounds like they tried to use the band's record label website as notability. Well, y'know, hmm.

And national TV appearances in Denmark and Germany, and being (briefly) on CNN.

I'm of the opinion I have to say.

Just to clarify, I wasn't suggesting a boycott of WP, but the whole thing is symptomatic of its apparent mindset - a group of self-elected 'experts' seemingly more interested in regulating content to their own (in this case borderline, rather arbitrary) criteria rather than the needs of the user-base is hardly diplomatic and doesn't sit well with me. It also goes against the whole ethos of what Wikipedia is supposed to be all about.

Where Wikipedia excels is in information about this kind of niche topic, in fact this is probably it's main strength compared to its competitors. Like Grim says I cannot understand the reasons to delete information that may still be useful or relevant to some. Regarding 'notability' I'm not an expert on PPOPT but I believe they have been featured on CNN, played a number festivals of international importance and been featured in a number of magazine/newspaper articles among other 'notable' things.

Frankly it looks like the die was cast when the administrator arguing for it turned out to be in the band, had started the article, and was asking everyone to "take his word for it".

Let someone else write the article and I'm sure it'll succeed next time. Especially if actual links to verify those festivals appearances is given.

And it does need to be a disinterested party making the decision, whether you like the decision or not.

So another case of somebody writing the article about themselves then starting an argument about the removal of it? Oh look, Vimto...

Dimriiiiiil!

He wasn't in the band as far as I can make out, although he did state he knew them. Which as I understand doesn't justify calls for deleting something in itself. The only grounds I can make out was that the people arguing for 'speedy' deletion happened to be all be wiki admins and the people arguing for its inclusion, bar one, weren't.

It's hardly the same as Tim Langdell's wife writing his own entry is it?

Here's the Google cache of the entry before it was axed from WP. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, with a number of cited sources given, including the CNN interview. The fact they've performed with Rob Hubbard, Ben Dalglish and others is of notable interest in itself, I would have thought. Also, you'll note that other 'obscure' video-game themed bands such as the Minibosses and Megadriver are still happily included on WP:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I2Z5EYBitXsJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Play_on_Tape+press+play+on+tape+wikipedia&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

810 Bananas.

More bananas could have been scored with the appropriate Dimlie. Green screen users are advised that level 2 can be hard to see without turning up the contrast.

Wikipedia: A decent entertainment site, a fucking abysmal encyclopedia. If thats really the goal, all the self-styled kings of wikipedia should all bugger off and do something more useful instead. Like setting fire to their own genitals.

Wasn't it originally a compilation of existing, legitimate, encyclopaedias? If so, it's presumably fine as long as one avoids the fanboy shit that gets added after the origination.