Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Errors in Wikipedia that have been corrected in the Encyclopædia Britannica (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was delete. Radiant_ &gt;|&lt; 23:47, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Errors in Wikipedia that have been corrected in the Encyclopædia Britannica
Not encyclopedic; puts us in a bad light. Opus33 18:30, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep . BJAODN. 1) Opus33, you say it's "not encyclopedic". OK, sure, but that's not a very fair criticism for something that's not claiming to be an encyclopedia article &mdash; it's in the "Wikipedia:" mainspace rather than the main article space. 2) You also say it "puts us in a bad light"? How? The point of the page is part-humour, and part to illustrate how the idea of a public "list of mistakes" is very natural for Britannica, but almost nonsensical for Wikipedia. The aim is to put Wikipedia in a good light. 3) This survived a vote for deletion a couple of months ago: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Wikipedia:Errors in Wikipedia that have been corrected in the Encyclopædia Britannica. &mdash; Matt Crypto 18:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * This afd nomination was orphaned. Listing now (on WP:MD, where it should have been in the first place).  No opinion. &mdash;Cryptic (talk) 07:41, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * weak keep Changed my mind. WP is filled with jokes; this seems to be part of WP's culture.  Sometimes they are so numerous that they annoy me, but this is hardly the worst of them. :) Xoloz 15:07, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete Previous AfD was three months ago, so renomination is fine. An eternally empty page is not useful.  I support deletion on a rationale of "no content; never will have content". Xoloz 15:47, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete if anyone finds an error in wikipedia, sofixit!Borisblue 20:20, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed, that's actually the half-serious point the page is trying to make &mdash; it prompts the realisation that Wikipedia is a better model than Britannica because you can fix mistakes yourself instantly (well, depending on the servers...); Britannica has a huge list of mistakes, but such a list doesn't even make sense for Wikipedia. I wouldn't mind so much if this page ends up deleted on the grounds that it's crappy humour or an inappropriate way to make this point, but to get deleted because people miss the point would be disappointing ;-) &mdash; Matt Crypto 21:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Weak keep - although it does smack vaguely of WP:POINT. Grutness...  wha?  00:32, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete - Cute, but ineffective. Article claims to have been created "out of a spirit of fairness", when in reality, according to Matt Crypto, it's a subtle attempt at self-praise and pro-Wikipedia propaganda. If it's to be kept, the description should certainly be changed to minimize the page's blatant dishonesty, and to cause less confusion (most peole looking at the page will just think it's depopulated because we're too lazy to populate it, not because there's nothing to populate it with; thus not only its stated agenda, but also its hidden agenda, fails, as it makes us look incompetent or boorish more than anything). However, the easiest thing to do would probably be to simply explain on Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia why we don't have an article for the reverse topic: because any well-known error on Wikipedia is almost always immediately fixed. Simply stating that clearly on the "Errors in Encyclopedia Britannica" page is much more honest and clear, and less confusing and circuitous, than creating a whole project page just to make a point. If this page is intended purely as humor, it should be made a more explicit parody so that it will actually be amusing, and it should be moved to Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense (assuming it's even worthy of that section), just as has been done to other joke pages on the Wikipedia namespace. But I'm really doubting whether it's amusing or interesting enough for that.. Not only is it useless, misleading, and redundant, but, worst of all, it's also not funny. It's sort of like a somewhat clever pun that needs to be explained to be gotten: it might make you nod your head in gratified understanding when you're told or figure out the meaning, but you've still just wasted minutes of your life hearing a cheap pun. -Silence 22:57, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm getting the vibe that you don't like the page ;-) Ah well, I can't really defend the page against charges of bad humour. &mdash; Matt Crypto 05:55, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh, no, I don't really mind the page one way or the other. I'd be perfectly fine with it staying where it is on a personal level (though I would like the dishonest "out of a spirit of fairness" stuff corrected, if it's not to be an obvious humor article). But as a Wikipedia editor, I feel obligated to vote for the method that will confuse and annoy the least people with a rather pointless page, and that seems consistent with how similar pages have been treated. That's how I see it, anyway. -Silence 06:23, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. This page is empty, and ought to remain so except for periods of a few seconds. It can serve no purpose for this project. NatusRoma 22:50, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Expand or else Delete. Hell's bells, I never heard of an article, namespace or not, that was empty and meant to stay that way. Unless someone is willing to make the article much lengthier, including many errors in wikipedia that have been corrected in the EB, I suggest its movement to Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense. That's where it would belong, eh? D. G. 02:17, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Expand or Delete. I agree, an article that is meant to stay empty doesn't seem useful at all, unless it records all past changes.  Perhaps having dates and how quickly errors were corrected would be informative, but otherwise this doesn't even seem too entertaining, nonetheless informative. Comic 02:51, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I think you and D.G. miss the point; the article can't be expanded because its title is Errors in Wikipedia that have been corrected in the Encyclopædia Britannica and Britannica has never corrected an error in Wikipedia; it's corrected errors period, but it's never said "this version of the Encyclopedia was corrected in X way even though Wikipedia got it wrong", like we do with the "Errors in Britannica corrected by Wikipedia" article. It sounds like you're proposing the creation of a whole new article, not suggesting that this article is salvagable just by adding stuff to it; its current title renders it inherently useless until Britannica itself starts to specifically direct its new edition's fixes at Wikipedia mistakes, like we do for them. Since it doesn't, we can't write about them doing it no matter what. What we could have is an article about past mistakes in Wikipedia that have been pointed out (rather than directly fixed) by various important external sources, like newspaper articles and such (though this would be kind of redundant with the many "Criticisms of Wikipedia" pages, unless we could find a lot of stuff to fill it with), or long-standing Wikipedia mistakes that were fixed by referencing an encyclopedia (though the latter would be just about impossible to fill in any meaningful way), but whether we make a new article like that or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether this article should be preserved or not. We can easily delete it and then make a different article that does the "comparing-Wikipedia-to-encyclopedias" idea much better, if this delete goes through. If it doesn't, we're back at square one. -Silence 03:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, gloating, not useful to any human being. silsor 03:14, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete Not encyclopediac.prashanthns
 * To use a phrase that goes around AfD a lot, which I am attempting to use in a humorous manner, "Delete as unmaintainable listcruft." Because of the nature of Wikipedia, we always have quite a few articles around the edges that have not been updated/are not highly used/are therefore probably of dubious quality and verifiability. That doesn't mean we should abandon what Wikipedia is trying to do, and we should improve such articles we see so long as we think the subject is of encyclopedic merit, but this list, if properly updated, would be quite long. Jacqui  ★ 17:08, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.