BASFA Doesn't Exist

[kevin_standlee]

At least according to "RadioFan," a Wikipedia editor, who is trying to get BASFA's Wikipedia entry deleted. Nothing I say matters, since I have a conflict of interest as a former club officer and regular attendee. Since nearly every mention of the club is online, but not in Official Paper Newspapers With Web Sites (paper by itself wouldn't count, I think, since it couldn't be verified), it is effectively impossible to prove the club exists to his satisfaction.

I'd feel persecuted personally, but he's on the warpath against a bunch of other SF fan groups, too.

I'm not surprised that his user page has been vandalized 15 times.

Comments

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Makes me wish I had 'leet computer skillz' so I could do it too. People like that seem not to understand the -idea- of the internet: it's not here to back up your paper files. Yeesh!

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Well, the back-ups are often a beneficial side-effect...

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

Again, sorry about precipitating this. RadioFan is obviously trying to fulfill a need in his/her life by destroying other people's entries. I wish Wikipedia had an appeals process...

ttyl

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Kevin, you are mis-representing the argument. 'Notability' in WP terms is different from existence.
You don't have to 'prove' the organisation exists, that isn't the test.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. The other person isn't arguing that it doesn't exist. It's being called out on notability. And honestly, I don't think you've made a good argument for notability. I mean, your list of significant members is basically you, Cheryl, and Garcia. In the overall global scheme, not so much. I'm sorry if that's hard to hear, but it's true.

Instead of trying to prove BASFA exists, you should be coming up with better information about significance and notability.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

Do we know who Radiofan is???

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

No, but that's not important. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and he's managed to accumulate sufficient wuffie in their community. I think he'd fail his own criteria. As it happens, I could probably prove my own notability a bit better than BASFA's, since there's a television news appearance with me that I could probably find. I might be able to find the SJ Mercury News articles that interviewed me and Tom Whitmore before ConJose, but whether I could actually find an online version — since it appears they need an online source that also appears in ink-and-paper form in order to be sufficiently "notable" &mdash would be more difficult.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

What other groups does this douchebag have a bug up his ass over?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Off to the top of my head, I think he's using the same "irrelevancy" argument on the Orange County Science Fiction Club and the Ottawa Science Fiction Society. He's an avowed "exclusionist" who likes deleting articles.

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

It would seem to me that File770 is a valid independent source. Can someone tell me how I can add a comment to that affect. (I already have a wikipedia account. I just can't seem to figure out the easiest way to edit the discussions page.)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The way you add comments is to the edit the discussion page. I'm not very good at it myself, but if you edit the page and copy one of the other comments, you should have the right formatting. Put four tildes ~~~~ at the end of your comment to "sign" it, and use the Preview button to see how it looks before actually committing the edit.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Deletion from Wikipedia is, in my opinion, not tragical. In their attempt to be trustworthy, their rules of "proof" have become so esoteric and convoluted that I'm surprised anything withstands them.

I do believe BASFA is notable, but unfortunately (in wikipedia terms) it is mostly notable as a meeting place for people who go off and do things on their own or small groups. And BASFA doesn't affiliate itself even with sponsorship with those things. Itself BASFA doesn't produce anything but minutes and the annual Hugo Rec. list. It doesn't run a convention, have a newsletter, or even promote itself a whole lot. Parties at local, and meetings at other conventions (preaching to the converted) is not really notable to the outside world.

In effect, it's a SFnal version of the Algoniquin Round Table or the Inklings. Really only notable for who's there and what they accomplish. Unlike those two groups, nobody "outside" has done any writing or reporting about our particular meeting of minds.

[smarier.livejournal.com]

He took out NWSFS (Seattle area) as well.

I believe he took out the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

What is this guy's problem with SF fan groups? Why does he want to claim BASFA & others don't exist?

Running around deleting well known SF groups is just stupid - and "deletionist" or not, there ought to be a way to get around this sort of idiocy.

Perhaps an larger Wiki entry that talks about SFnal groups in general, listing the specific groups (from NWSFS to PhiliSFS to BASFA) with at least a paragraph or two on each group? Would that get around the tools this guy would use to shut down a group?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I think he may be right - he doesn't say that Basfa doesn't exist, and being mentioned by the notable is not itself a sign of notability - but who goes on a crusade to delete wiki entries?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That's the definition of "deletionist". It's the same mindset as vandals that like to trash things other people have built, actually. He apparently loves tearing down other people's work.

The Wikipedia scheme has made it a real haven for such people. By making it their primary occupation, they gain enough status there, and learn how to game the system, that they can run roughshod over people, and they love it.

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

Thanks' for "keep" in the OSFS article, Kevin! I wanted to go to all of the sites and put a "keep" in all of them but was told by someone who knows a lot about the Wikipedia politics that it would hurt all of the articles struggling to remain alive.

ttyl

[chocolatescifi.livejournal.com]

Judging from what I have seen, I'm surprised that his user page has only been vandalized 15 times.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

I gave up on the reliability of Wikipedia many years ago, due in large part to Trolls like this Radiofan entity.

Deletionists on Wikipedia

[ladyjestocost.livejournal.com]

And the point of being a deletionist is?

Is Wikipedia running out of bytes?

Maybe English doesn't have enough words?

Or is the internet short on obsessives to keep articles up-to-date?

I would think accurate articles about everything would be Wikipedia's goal. But clearly I'm wrong.

Re: Deletionists on Wikipedia

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Accuracy is stated to be a Wikipedia goal, if memory serves. But even its estimable founder and those he trusts to carry on with and without him can be a relative handful amongst the user-base entire.

Re: Deletionists on Wikipedia

[zeborah]

Is Wikipedia running out of bytes?

I'm by no means a deletionist but the size of the site does cost money to host (hence the irritating banners periodically requesting donations). If junk pages were allowed to flourish it would be a problem. And the lines between { vandalism > joke > vanity page > insignificant club > may-be-notable-one-day club > notable now > no encyclopaedia should miss it } are obviously not drawn in the same places by everyone. (Which is why the notability guidelines were drawn up in an attempt to quantify.)

As for why he's picking on SF clubs - maybe he's got a grudge; maybe he just came across one page and then decided to work systematically through the category it belongs to according to the criterion he considers to be correct.

Re: Deletionists on Wikipedia

[redbird]

I think the reasoning behind the "notability" rule is (to quote one of my favorite novels) "where in all the data is the information?" If there are articles on 473 North Americans named Kevin Smith, many of which say only "Born in 1997, student at Bowne High School," it becomes harder to find the articles on the handful of Kevin Smiths who anyone is actually interested in reading about.

This applies better to individuals than to organizations, imho—there aren't umpteen different Philadelphia Science Fiction Societies, and acronyms are already handled by putting articles under the full term and having disambiguation pages. But I haven't been active over there in a long time.

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem with RadioFan's actions is that he/she initially attempted to use the speedy deletion policy to eliminate various SF clubs. That many of the entries could have used updating/cleaning up is not in doubt, but simply deleting them quickly doesn't accomplish that.

ttyl

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

It appears RadioFan tagged it for deletion, but then a user named The Blade of the Northern Lights changed it to speedy deletion. I can't figure out why, though, and I note that RadioFan later changed to to regular deletion again because a source was added and he was afraid admins would "shy away from deletion".

[(Anonymous)]

Kevin: I see that you have mentioned various fannish third-party sources mentioning BASFA in the deletion discussion, but they haven't been placed in the article yet. Such sources may not be as good as mainstream newspapers and television for Wikipedia purposes, but they would be somewhat helpful in establishing notability. Note that the third-party sources to be cited in the article can be either online, or in print (such as fanzines), or both. Preferably the sources should be used as in-line citations using the "ref ... /ref" reference formatting (I see you have already done that with links to the club web site, so you are familiar with that formatting already -- which is good, because I can't explain it here due to the HTML in the comments).

Also, it should be noted that RadioFan is not a Wikipedia administrator, and any registered user can nominate a page for deletion. So the fact that the BASFA page has been nominated for deletion just reflects RadioFan's opinion, not that of the Wikipedia community. If the page winds up getting deleted, which seems unlikely at this point, that could be said to reflect the opinion of the Wikipedia community.

--Joshua

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'm now afraid to add any of those references, because RadioFan has accused me of conflicts of interest, so adding any of these references would apparently make the article worse in his opinion unless someone not associated with the club (or probably with SF fandom at all) did so. Apparently, only people who care nothing about a topic are actually qualified to edit it. I'm grateful that at least one other person out there, while acknowledging that as an active member of the club I have a potential conflict of interest, admitted that I'd kept a proper Neutral Point of View in the article.