Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-06-08/Deletion report

We do seek the truth, and will remove incorrect, inaccurate and outdated information even when it appears in reliable sources. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is "verifiability, not truth". Hawkeye7  (discuss)  20:59, 8 June 2024 (UTC)


 * "But should we not seek the truth? Yes, of course. Nonetheless, as Maher said, like the volunteer writers of Wikipedia, we also must focus on "the best of what we can know right now." That is a statement of intellectual humility, not of relativism. Complex topics and problems do not lend themselves to easy assessments of truth in real time. Through broad sourcing, the Wikipedia model in theory moves us to closer approximations of what is true." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:05, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Just wondering why I did not get the ping about my mention in this... In either case, interesting to see this tiny AfD led to a piece in TS. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:13, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I believe pings only take place if they're published at the same time someone signs their name. Presumably, that didn't happen here.  Aza24  (talk)   02:29, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair. Perhaps there should be a best practice rule (and maybe even a bot) to notify people whose usernames appear in TS? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 02:42, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have never been so sure about how that worked. My main clue here is that prior to a couple years ago users were mentioned in Signpost articles with noping, which seemed to imply that linking their pages directly did ping them. I think it is good for people to get a ping when we are writing an article that mentions them, so if this doesn't do it maybe I will have to figure out something else. jp×g🗯️ 07:57, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I believe that's just a common misconception. Check out Template:Reply to (which is what Ping redirects too), under "Single recipient" is says "The comment must be signed and belong to a named section of a "Talk" or "Wikipedia" namespace page in order for the notification to work". Presumably they stopped using noping because it didn't matter (or maybe they used to sign articles?).
 * In any case, it would make sense to me that people mentioned in articles are notified; perhaps they are all just separately pinged (with a signature) on the corresponding talk pages.  Aza24  (talk)   18:49, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Could create a template "this Signtpost article mentions user x, y and z"? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 00:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I pondered this for a bit today, but I don't know what a good solution would look like. The thing is that in some articles we're mentioning dozens of people, so it'd be very difficult to ping all of them without a bot or script or something. I have a hypothesis for something that might work though, testing it out right now -- basically just do one edit that blanks a page, then a second edit that restores all the content with a tetratilde at the end, then a third edit reverting the previous two -- this should be possible to do with a script, and it would automatically ping everyone who was mentioned on the page without needing to go through and use the ping template for each one. jp×g🗯️ 06:50, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Unless 51 usernames are linked on the page, of course. jlwoodwa (talk) 08:24, 10 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I still think that Wikipedia's implementation of a periodization of video game "console generations" has had a huge impact on the video game culture. The way we talk about the history of video game hardware and imagine its future is hard to separate from that lense, it's proven an extremely sticky idea. Citogenesis is an interesting source of new information and ideas: it has an air of officiality around it while having no real quality. Patrick Parker is not a very good name for the Riddler, Julius Pringles is fine I guess, Brazilian aardvark is quite boring; these names are sticky in part because they don't feel very lively. I think Pringles should make my 50,000 word Julius Pringles romantic fanfic canon instead ;p ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 07:41, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The reason you could not find a picture of a Brazilian aardvark, User:Svampesky, is that aardvarks are native to Africa (at least according to our article on aardvarks ...). Another fun fact is that the "Brazilian aardvark" moniker made it into a Cambridge University Press book, where it occurred in a section about copying other people's errors: Someone up there really has a sense of humour. --Andreas JN 466 19:32, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Beastly. — N eonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 09:31, 25 June 2024 (UTC) —

I wonder if Craig Smith knows anything about it? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 11:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC).