The most dumbfounding thing in all of this is the number of people interacting directly with Jimmy Wales on twitter and having no sense for how wikipedia works or why. It should not be surprising that a company webpage or even the CEO confirming the fact are insufficient sources. If wikipedia did accept this, they would just be a place for people to make self-reported baseless claims. There's already a place for that, and it's the platform they're responding on.
Wikipedia has an interesting problem. How do you build a large corpus of generally true information? Their solution is to offload the work of verification to journalists and academics, who are held liable for their statements by the institutions they work within. This is why wikipedia is a tertiary source. Primary sources originate some piece of information, secondary sources investigate and verify those primary sources (verify being "they said that" not "it really happened"), and tertiary sources aggregate trusted secondary sources. All of the people in the twitter thread (excluding Jimmy himself, of course) seem completely unaware in this system, and while I too would be interested in more "modern" approaches, don't seem to have thought about this problem at all.
Journalism and academia are both on the back foot these days, and it seems unlikely that we will see a big resurgence in funding for either. Without them, I don't see how wikipedia can continue to outsource the problem of verification.
I dunno I just find it silly because they're making such a Thing out of it that soon there's just gonna be a Wikipedia page on Odingate as it is rapidly becoming a notable public event of its own. Then that page will have to link to a page on Odin anyway
The hypothetical "Odingate" article in a reliable source would probably have to discuss Odin enough to also be a viable source for Odin itself; problem solved.
> Articles for Deletion votes -- original with comments
>
> Summarizing it, 5/7 for delete have accounts, and 1/4 for keep have accounts. Not along after the final vote, a Wikipedia admin deleted the article. Being a little bit lax with my language, the majority's consensus agreed that Odin isn't notable, and the article had no reliable sources.
important clarification about a popular misconception: "Articles for deletion" discussions on English Wikipedia are not decided by vote.
If I've got this right: programming these days -- especially niche areas -- meshes poorly with Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources and notability, which were designed mostly with traditional media in mind.
e.g. a company saying they use a language is not considered a good source because it's a primary source? Not sure if I'm getting that part right.
The most interesting part to me: Wikipedia has a bunch of languages that were used by like one person, because there is published material on them, while languages used by thousands of people today get deleted because they fail Wikipedia's specific definition of notability.
And they're reluctant to change that because they expect it would lead to a flood of wannabes making articles about their hobby language.
> Wikipedia has a bunch of languages that were used by like one person, because there is published material on them
No. It's more like, there are plenty of articles on Wikipedia that don't meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines AT ALL, but when you write an article on Wikipedia and enough time passes without anyone noticing that the article is poorly sourced, then eventually the tendency of Wikipedia community is to just keep it.
This is what has led to the what-about-ism regarding Odin's deletion - there are lots of other programming languages that also don't meet the notability guidelines, yet, to this day, still have Wikipedia articles.
Could someone come along and propose deletion for such articles? Yes, of course. You yourself could go do that right now, if you want. But nobody's getting paid for such work, so someone has to want to. The tendency of Wikipedia editors is that, when an article is many years old, they would rather flag it for improvement rather than simply throw away years of fellow editors' work. Whereas an article that's brand new is likely to not have much work put into it, and also more likely to be self-promotion and/or spam.
This is very frustrating for people who create Wikipedia articles and have them deleted. "You mean, whether or not my non-notable article gets deleted or not is just the luck of whether someone comes along and notices that it's not notable?" Yep. Like I said, nobody's getting paid for deletion work.
I know programming is what's most important to many in this community, but as an outsider I need to ask: literally WTF is Odin? I mean I know about Java and C++, etc. But Odin? That's what Wikipedia policies are for. It cannot include anything and everything about every single profession, subculture, or interest group.
An anime community would complain that a very influential (but largely unknown and mostly lost) OVA from 1987 should have its own article. A Peruvian community could argue that one of its most celebrated local activists should have his own article. Of course they would, but how could Wikipedia know they are really what they claim if there isn't a standard of what a credible/respectable source is?
That being said, Wikipedia editors are just Reddit mods with delusions of grandeur, so anything that brings them down is fine by me. Grokpedia has the right idea... I actually think that's the future. Too bad it's controlled by a grifting manchild.
This article makes Odin sound extremely well-known. I've never heard of it before, and I feel like I keep up with programming topics pretty diligently. Admittedly I don't work at the systems programming layer, but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics.
Curious if others feel similarly, or maybe I just happened to miss it?
I would consider it extremely obscure overall. A large majority of programmers would not be aware of its existence. At the same time there are clearly much less popular languages with articles so it is kindof weird to push to delete. (eg: random scheme implementation w/ no releases in 20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC) I would say that wikipedia broadly favors programming languages as far as notability. Like most nerd/geek things their footprint skews toward the internet, and people who enjoy geek stuff are more likely to be wikipedia admins than the general population.
SISC is there because it's not notable, so the busybodies haven't even noticed the page exists. Odin, however, is notable, and that put it on their radar as a target for attacking its notability.
They already have hundreds of programming language articles, this being singled out is a perfect encapsulation of the sheer lowIQ stupidity of the Wikipedia community and their process.
I am interested in programming language topics and I certainly have heard of Odin and have seen a couple of interviews with Ginger Bill. Same with Zig, Rust, Jai, C++ etc. I haven't used much of these (only C++ and Rust out of these), though. But I find that stuff interesting.
The author protested the framing, but it's very much a game-dev oriented language. In fact, it's the most pleasant language for game development I have ever used. It comes with all sorts of "batteries included" in that direction, possibly more than any other existing language. (Well, I still didn't get my Jai invite, so who knows ;) Odin was a major influence on Jai.)
Odin is extremely well known to every human being who keeps up on programming language development, along with Zig, Nim, D, Jai, V, Crystal, Carbon, and others. "programming topics" isn't relevant.
I keep up with PL development, and I am only vaguely aware of Odin (and same for Jai and V).
(But this isn’t the point: lots of programmers know about relatively obscure thing, but that does not itself make them notable. Notability is a well-defined property on Wikipedia.)
It's kind of niche but is getting bigger. The Discord server has 10k members, the biggest(?) Twitch programming streamer has been using it recently, JangaFX is big enough to be used by AAA game companies and a few large film studios, and I'm sure there's plenty of users who aren't on the Discord server.
If you're comparing it to Rust/C++ you must live in a cave or something. So yes. It's not that big. But it's probably in the top 10 of hyped languages of the current year. There's a bunch of languages from the 60's to 90's on Wikipedia that have probably never had as many users or software shipped as Odin.
I feel like if you’re into programming languages as a hobby, the chances you know of Odin are pretty high. Not everyone can know everything, of course, but my impression is that it punches above average on notability within the niche.
I'm not sure I understand why even a truly obscure programming language article should ever be deleted; it's not like Wikipedia is running low on paper. If Odin ceased all development tomorrow it would be good to have some record of what it was.
For the record, I like Odin.
(On homebrew it appears to have been downloaded 6,707 in the past year. Compare to:)
Interesting article (I tend to agree with you re SNG in the programming field). But unfortunately I couldn't easily absorb the substance as your site needs some work on mobile:
- text completely overflowing the background
- body text is arguably too small
- the masonry grid layout of posts does not work visually
The real "engagement farming" is from the Wikipedia editor attempting to delete the article for clout amongst the Wikipedia community. That's all this is about.
The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can participate. Anyone can advocate for change, such as changing the rules around notability.
But if you want to have enough influence to effectively advocate for changing a rule as impactful as the site-wide notability guidelines, then you'd likely want to spend quite a while volunteering, integrating yourself into the community, and learning a lot about how and why the site rules are what they are.
I think that's a good thing. It means the people who have the influence to make huge decisions like that are deeply familiar with the website and the community, and therefore deeply familiar with the consequences of those decisions.
So I just find it frustrating when people who don't participate in the community whatsoever write inflammatory diatribes on why they think the editing guidelines should be changed because their favorite programming language got marked for deletion.
And it's even more frustrating how, when their handful of drive-by tweets fail to immediately enact sweeping change, they and their followers then start a huge flame war, accusing Wikipedia mods of being "cultural marxists" and "shills for the mainstream media" and etc.
Anyways, my point is -- if you want to change things, try participating in the community rather than shouting slurs at it from the outside.
I looked and the cultural marxism tweet has zero likes, zero comments, and only 35 views. Although it has caused much consternation for you and the author. So it seems strange that you don't understand why people might be concerned about what Wikipedia has to say about things, and how it works, given its prominence.
Interesting article until you reach the gooey, messy bottom where the author takes a sudden personal turn and decides to pick apart the "spineless" creator of the programming language - who is the article's actual subject - by wielding their own ideologically and morally superior perspectives as truths. Smug and ironic.
I had never heard about the language until today. In my world, Rust is C's main competitor.
> My hypothesis is quite simple: I don't think GingerBill ever cared about Wikipedia's standards for programming. He follows several right-wing figures on Twitter, who have long since made up their mind that Wikipedia has been ideologically captured by activists and "the woke".
Oh, well, if a critic fails your ideological purity test, I guess that must mean there can't be any valid criticisms.
Wikipedia admins get it wrong more often than they get it right, and the general process for Wikipedia is obtuse, ignorant, and generally backward, with most of the favor given towards "people with old accounts" as opposed to actual knowledge.
It's beyond simple to get new editors banned for simply creating edits others don't like, no matter what the veracity is.
The only reason it's good for things like science is that it's generally hard for the kind of lowIQ populace their older accounts and admins have to argue about definitive numbers. But I am sure if they could they'd say things like "Hydrogen doesn't actually always have 1 electron", and so on.
The most dumbfounding thing in all of this is the number of people interacting directly with Jimmy Wales on twitter and having no sense for how wikipedia works or why. It should not be surprising that a company webpage or even the CEO confirming the fact are insufficient sources. If wikipedia did accept this, they would just be a place for people to make self-reported baseless claims. There's already a place for that, and it's the platform they're responding on.
Wikipedia has an interesting problem. How do you build a large corpus of generally true information? Their solution is to offload the work of verification to journalists and academics, who are held liable for their statements by the institutions they work within. This is why wikipedia is a tertiary source. Primary sources originate some piece of information, secondary sources investigate and verify those primary sources (verify being "they said that" not "it really happened"), and tertiary sources aggregate trusted secondary sources. All of the people in the twitter thread (excluding Jimmy himself, of course) seem completely unaware in this system, and while I too would be interested in more "modern" approaches, don't seem to have thought about this problem at all.
Journalism and academia are both on the back foot these days, and it seems unlikely that we will see a big resurgence in funding for either. Without them, I don't see how wikipedia can continue to outsource the problem of verification.
I dunno I just find it silly because they're making such a Thing out of it that soon there's just gonna be a Wikipedia page on Odingate as it is rapidly becoming a notable public event of its own. Then that page will have to link to a page on Odin anyway
The hypothetical "Odingate" article in a reliable source would probably have to discuss Odin enough to also be a viable source for Odin itself; problem solved.
Link will be red?
> Articles for Deletion votes -- original with comments
>
> Summarizing it, 5/7 for delete have accounts, and 1/4 for keep have accounts. Not along after the final vote, a Wikipedia admin deleted the article. Being a little bit lax with my language, the majority's consensus agreed that Odin isn't notable, and the article had no reliable sources.
important clarification about a popular misconception: "Articles for deletion" discussions on English Wikipedia are not decided by vote.
For more details, see
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_sub...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion#Ov...
If I've got this right: programming these days -- especially niche areas -- meshes poorly with Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources and notability, which were designed mostly with traditional media in mind.
e.g. a company saying they use a language is not considered a good source because it's a primary source? Not sure if I'm getting that part right.
The most interesting part to me: Wikipedia has a bunch of languages that were used by like one person, because there is published material on them, while languages used by thousands of people today get deleted because they fail Wikipedia's specific definition of notability.
And they're reluctant to change that because they expect it would lead to a flood of wannabes making articles about their hobby language.
I genuinely don't think Malbolge, for example, warrants a Wikipedia page if Odin doesn't
Malbolge is basically a meme, and Wikipedia does have articles for memes. Speaking for myself, I have heard about Malbolge, and not about Odin.
Perhaps it is because Malbolge is notable within the category of esolangs.
In wikipedia-land, I read "primary source" as "motivated source", given their need to prune biased edits.
The fatal flaw here being that secondary sources and tertiary ad infinitum are all always motivated. It's inescapable.
You've almost got it, except:
> Wikipedia has a bunch of languages that were used by like one person, because there is published material on them
No. It's more like, there are plenty of articles on Wikipedia that don't meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines AT ALL, but when you write an article on Wikipedia and enough time passes without anyone noticing that the article is poorly sourced, then eventually the tendency of Wikipedia community is to just keep it.
This is what has led to the what-about-ism regarding Odin's deletion - there are lots of other programming languages that also don't meet the notability guidelines, yet, to this day, still have Wikipedia articles.
Could someone come along and propose deletion for such articles? Yes, of course. You yourself could go do that right now, if you want. But nobody's getting paid for such work, so someone has to want to. The tendency of Wikipedia editors is that, when an article is many years old, they would rather flag it for improvement rather than simply throw away years of fellow editors' work. Whereas an article that's brand new is likely to not have much work put into it, and also more likely to be self-promotion and/or spam.
This is very frustrating for people who create Wikipedia articles and have them deleted. "You mean, whether or not my non-notable article gets deleted or not is just the luck of whether someone comes along and notices that it's not notable?" Yep. Like I said, nobody's getting paid for deletion work.
I know programming is what's most important to many in this community, but as an outsider I need to ask: literally WTF is Odin? I mean I know about Java and C++, etc. But Odin? That's what Wikipedia policies are for. It cannot include anything and everything about every single profession, subculture, or interest group.
An anime community would complain that a very influential (but largely unknown and mostly lost) OVA from 1987 should have its own article. A Peruvian community could argue that one of its most celebrated local activists should have his own article. Of course they would, but how could Wikipedia know they are really what they claim if there isn't a standard of what a credible/respectable source is?
That being said, Wikipedia editors are just Reddit mods with delusions of grandeur, so anything that brings them down is fine by me. Grokpedia has the right idea... I actually think that's the future. Too bad it's controlled by a grifting manchild.
For reference, here's the article's content at the time of deletion: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Odin_(progr...
This article makes Odin sound extremely well-known. I've never heard of it before, and I feel like I keep up with programming topics pretty diligently. Admittedly I don't work at the systems programming layer, but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics.
Curious if others feel similarly, or maybe I just happened to miss it?
I would consider it extremely obscure overall. A large majority of programmers would not be aware of its existence. At the same time there are clearly much less popular languages with articles so it is kindof weird to push to delete. (eg: random scheme implementation w/ no releases in 20 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SISC) I would say that wikipedia broadly favors programming languages as far as notability. Like most nerd/geek things their footprint skews toward the internet, and people who enjoy geek stuff are more likely to be wikipedia admins than the general population.
SISC is there because it's not notable, so the busybodies haven't even noticed the page exists. Odin, however, is notable, and that put it on their radar as a target for attacking its notability.
This is an argument for deleting those non-notable articles as well, not retaining other non-notable articles.
Wikipedia has articles for exceptionally small and stupid things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages
They already have hundreds of programming language articles, this being singled out is a perfect encapsulation of the sheer lowIQ stupidity of the Wikipedia community and their process.
It's been here a few times, maybe 4-6 times in the past year?
It's relatively well known? Certainly not mainstream.
I am interested in programming language topics and I certainly have heard of Odin and have seen a couple of interviews with Ginger Bill. Same with Zig, Rust, Jai, C++ etc. I haven't used much of these (only C++ and Rust out of these), though. But I find that stuff interesting.
The author protested the framing, but it's very much a game-dev oriented language. In fact, it's the most pleasant language for game development I have ever used. It comes with all sorts of "batteries included" in that direction, possibly more than any other existing language. (Well, I still didn't get my Jai invite, so who knows ;) Odin was a major influence on Jai.)
The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else.
> Odin was a major influence on Jai.
This is a popular joke because of the release timeline. The reality is the inverse, and Ginger Bill has acknowledged the influence of Jai.
> The author knows the orientation of his language better than anyone else.
The author knows the intention of the language better than anyone else, but that doesn't mean it isn't especially game dev oriented.
Odin is extremely well known to every human being who keeps up on programming language development, along with Zig, Nim, D, Jai, V, Crystal, Carbon, and others. "programming topics" isn't relevant.
I keep up with PL development, and I am only vaguely aware of Odin (and same for Jai and V).
(But this isn’t the point: lots of programmers know about relatively obscure thing, but that does not itself make them notable. Notability is a well-defined property on Wikipedia.)
Then you don't.
Thank you, that’s very persuasive.
It's kind of niche but is getting bigger. The Discord server has 10k members, the biggest(?) Twitch programming streamer has been using it recently, JangaFX is big enough to be used by AAA game companies and a few large film studios, and I'm sure there's plenty of users who aren't on the Discord server.
If you're comparing it to Rust/C++ you must live in a cave or something. So yes. It's not that big. But it's probably in the top 10 of hyped languages of the current year. There's a bunch of languages from the 60's to 90's on Wikipedia that have probably never had as many users or software shipped as Odin.
I feel like if you’re into programming languages as a hobby, the chances you know of Odin are pretty high. Not everyone can know everything, of course, but my impression is that it punches above average on notability within the niche.
I'm not sure I understand why even a truly obscure programming language article should ever be deleted; it's not like Wikipedia is running low on paper. If Odin ceased all development tomorrow it would be good to have some record of what it was.
For the record, I like Odin.
(On homebrew it appears to have been downloaded 6,707 in the past year. Compare to:)
zig: 71,565
rust: 304,405
golang: 1,246,300
malbogle: 9
Interesting article (I tend to agree with you re SNG in the programming field). But unfortunately I couldn't easily absorb the substance as your site needs some work on mobile:
- text completely overflowing the background
- body text is arguably too small
- the masonry grid layout of posts does not work visually
- footnotes appearing out of order
This article seems quite drawn out for what is essentially an ad hominem attack on the personal views of the creator of the language.
> If you are familiar with Odin, one of the most popular "C competitor" languages, this might sound a little bit insane to say out loud
Its hard to believe someone actually said this with a straight face.
I tend to lean more inclusionist, but there is no world where odin is one of the most popular c competitor languages.
Zig is more popular. Name a second modern "C competitor" language that's more popular?
golang, rust, c++... etc?
It is disappointing to see that the v programming language has a Wikipedia article given it's history of being essentially fraudulent.
The real "engagement farming" is from the Wikipedia editor attempting to delete the article for clout amongst the Wikipedia community. That's all this is about.
The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can participate. Anyone can advocate for change, such as changing the rules around notability.
But if you want to have enough influence to effectively advocate for changing a rule as impactful as the site-wide notability guidelines, then you'd likely want to spend quite a while volunteering, integrating yourself into the community, and learning a lot about how and why the site rules are what they are.
I think that's a good thing. It means the people who have the influence to make huge decisions like that are deeply familiar with the website and the community, and therefore deeply familiar with the consequences of those decisions.
So I just find it frustrating when people who don't participate in the community whatsoever write inflammatory diatribes on why they think the editing guidelines should be changed because their favorite programming language got marked for deletion.
And it's even more frustrating how, when their handful of drive-by tweets fail to immediately enact sweeping change, they and their followers then start a huge flame war, accusing Wikipedia mods of being "cultural marxists" and "shills for the mainstream media" and etc.
Anyways, my point is -- if you want to change things, try participating in the community rather than shouting slurs at it from the outside.
I looked and the cultural marxism tweet has zero likes, zero comments, and only 35 views. Although it has caused much consternation for you and the author. So it seems strange that you don't understand why people might be concerned about what Wikipedia has to say about things, and how it works, given its prominence.
Interesting article until you reach the gooey, messy bottom where the author takes a sudden personal turn and decides to pick apart the "spineless" creator of the programming language - who is the article's actual subject - by wielding their own ideologically and morally superior perspectives as truths. Smug and ironic.
I had never heard about the language until today. In my world, Rust is C's main competitor.
> My hypothesis is quite simple: I don't think GingerBill ever cared about Wikipedia's standards for programming. He follows several right-wing figures on Twitter, who have long since made up their mind that Wikipedia has been ideologically captured by activists and "the woke".
Oh, well, if a critic fails your ideological purity test, I guess that must mean there can't be any valid criticisms.
I'll just say the obvious:
Wikipedia admins get it wrong more often than they get it right, and the general process for Wikipedia is obtuse, ignorant, and generally backward, with most of the favor given towards "people with old accounts" as opposed to actual knowledge.
It's beyond simple to get new editors banned for simply creating edits others don't like, no matter what the veracity is.
The only reason it's good for things like science is that it's generally hard for the kind of lowIQ populace their older accounts and admins have to argue about definitive numbers. But I am sure if they could they'd say things like "Hydrogen doesn't actually always have 1 electron", and so on.
> edits others don't like, no matter what the veracity is.
Wikipedia bans people for their behaviour, not for being right or wrong. So you are correct that veracity is irrelavent.
Are you saying that lying isn't considered poor behavior by Wikipedia or what? I don't believe that.