Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 05:13, 12 November 2005

"The Kid"

I wrote about the fiasco related to an ex-user. I know that he does not desire to have his name mentioned in perpetuity; however, I felt the matter was important to this article. If anyone feels that my inclusion of this material violates said person's privacy, or fans flames of further controversy, feel free to delete that section. I will not object. EventHorizon 05:31, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

summary

This rule could be summarized "Don't start an article about yourself. If you or your project is notable enough, someone else will start the article."

Add to first paragraph? - Omegatron 22:16, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Minor revert war

There has been a minor revert war about whether articles on high schools can be considered vanity or not. I should point out that it was present in the first version of this page, and given the age of the page one cannot unilaterally take that out. I should also point out that the person to first remove the clause is presently blocked for disruption.

Note that this does not mean that all high school articles are vanity, merely that some are (just like not all articles on people are vanity, but some are). If people want to establish that high school articles are never vanity, they should find an appropriate place to put the matter to discussion. Radiant_* 12:00, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

• The article as it stands right now is self-contradictory. Its second paragraph contradicts its third paragraph. Uncle G 10:33, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
  • You mean "Usually, vanity authors write about themselves..." contradicts "Joe Blow is a 32-year-old actuary from Seattle, Washington..."? I don't get it. Radiant_* 12:31, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
    • At the time that I wrote that, the article was somewhat different, and "Articles about start-up businesses or musicians are not vanity pages and are considered acceptable" contradicted "Several wikipedians include other personal articles under the "vanity" deletion criteria. These topic types include articles about one's high school, start-up business or band, for example.". Uncle G 12:46, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

Lack of fame/recognition

Under the somewhat twee subtitle "Does lack of fame a vanity article make?", we read:

A page should not be cast away as "vanity" simply because the subject is not famous. There is presently no consensus about what degree of recognition is required for a page to be included in Misplaced Pages, and therefore, lack of fame should be completely ignored in deletion debates.

(This appears to have been added by EventHorizon in this edit and not touched since.) This appears to say "We don't know what the required degree of recognition (RDR) is and therefore it is zero." Huh?

Or does this perhaps mean "Of itself, even infinitesimally low DR is not grounds for the charge of vanity"? That seems OK, leaving open the possibility of: "I do not claim that the article is vanity, but do claim that its subject has such a negligible DR that it should be deleted." -- Hoary 07:17, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

• Well, whatever EventHorizon says, 'lack of fame' is never 'completely ignored' in deletion debates. A subject doesn't have to be famous per se but needs to have some kind of merit before an article is merited. There's the biography inclusion guidelines, for instance. Radiant_* 10:08, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
• That text has actually been in the article since its creation. EventHorizon merely moved it. The final part of the sentence is illogical, and a prescription that is entirely ignored in practice. Uncle G 10:26, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
• Actually the passage you cite first appeared in the very first revision of this page back in May 2004, and has not been changed since, only moved to another location. It is true that "vanity" does not automatically follow from "non-notable" and the passage is correct that the degree of notability required for inclusion is frequently contested. Some very senior Wikipedians, like David Gerard maintain that notability is not a deletion criteria. Obviously that flies on the face of what happens on VfD every day. However, the suggestion "...and therefore, lack of fame should be completely ignored in deletion debates." is not very relevant to the problem of how to define "vanity" and should be removed by that reason, and also for being out-of-synch with current practice. I don't know what this semi-policy tag is, but don't let it stop you from improving this confusing section. jni 10:30, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, all, for what I take as a confirmation that I wasn't losing my marbles. This page does seem a crock. Note that it also says:

. . . it is particularly important that if you must write on these topics to write a good article in an encyclopedic style that establishes as much notability as possible.

-- which not only implies that notability is of some importance but emphasizes its importance (at least in some contexts. I think this page could benefit from a lot of work. -- Hoary 10:40, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

Reworking of the entire article

I've just got my toes wet in the article, as it were, making a few changes. There are a lot more that could be made. I think that a lot of what it says is wrong. One example: it may be a small minority (I don't know), but a significant number of vanity pages are truculently defended by their creators and recreated after deletion. -- Hoary 10:55, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)#Vanity. -- Hoary 06:29, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

PS but let's discuss it here instead. Incidentally, here is a much more interesting example of vanity than that presented in the article. (Admittedly vanity is not the only problem here, but it does seem to be the main motivation.) -- Hoary 12:05, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

I'd agree that this page needs cleaning up. I'd also support a rule prohibiting anyone from writing an article about themselves, their companies, their rock bands, etc. Note that the importance guidelines suggest, among other things, that the subject in question be of interest to 100+ people. —Wahoofive | Talk 20:47, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I would support that as a hard rule as well--no starting an article on yourself or things you're officially associated with (within reason). Thus, we would remove "Do not consider an article vanity simply because the subject wrote it about him/herself." Meelar (talk) 02:57, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this is such a good idea. "Vanity" pages should be deleted for reasons like not wikipedia:important, promotional material, or not verifiable. People can (sometimes) write reasonably neutral, informative articles about their own websites, like mindat.org. You'd only find out if they are honest enough to admit it, why punish them for that? Vfd deals with promotional articles about notable things pretty well, either they get cleaned up, or deleted. Kappa 05:06, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Point taken on the enforcability. Meelar (talk) 05:23, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, point taken. But in practice you don't only find out that people have written their own articles when they're honest enough to admit it; you also find out when they're thick enough to let drop something that implies it. (Sometimes they even admit it in VfD: "Why can't I have an article about myself?" etc.) Still, Kappa's line is interesting. Is it necessary to have a "no vanity" rule/guideline? Isn't the combination of existing rules/guidelines, plus that of "no promotion" (if this does not already exist), sufficient? -- Hoary 06:19, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

• I think the general guideline is that, if you (or your business/band/...) is notable, someone else will write an article about it. However, as Kappa states, occasionally people do write good articles about their own things, since they're by default very knowledgeable on the subject. The trick is keeping it NPOV. I do believe the vanity clause is useful, because if I were to write an article on myself that would arguably not be promotion (since I'm not selling anything) nor would it be unverifiable. Radiant_* 08:44, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Excuse me for thinking out loud here.

What's said above suggests that it's not necessary to warn against vanity. Instead, you stipulate NPoV, verifiability, (at least minimal) importance, and lack of promotion, and you're done. Vanity is then a non-issue.

However, I've a hunch that this isn't quite enough. What does "promotion" mean? Let's suppose Taki, his mate Brian, and his flatmate Chaz make up a neopunk band, the Snotpickers. They don't have any commercial recordings yet, and they're curiously evasive about the number and location of their gigs. Still, they credibly claim to have twenty tracks available for downloading. Now, if somebody writes in a WP article about them that the Snotpickers are in the same class as the Clash, that's obviously promotion. But what about what might be regarded as the "implicit promotion" of writing a screenful of dispassionate and apparently factual stuff about the musical influences on Taki, Brian, and Chaz, their tattoos, the number of instruments they've trashed, etc.? Hey, it's verifiable and not original research -- after all, it came off the Official Website, snotpickers-spit-on-you.com (actually a vanity URL that frames a Geocities site). I realize there are different points of view on this, but at an extreme -- let's say if the SPs only have two tracks available for downloading, not twenty -- I think almost everybody would claim that they don't merit any article (even if a photo is claimed to show a hundred people grooving to their funky beat). Now let's notch up the notability: they really do have the twenty tracks for downloading, and can prove that they played at half a dozen campus events. They really have trashed a lot of instruments (an essential part of their neopunk image) and Taki's bright green "Fuck everything" tattoo is very artistique and noteworthy (or so it's claimed). The vanity here, I would say, is in treating their only marginally interesting selves as being as worthy of scrutiny as Joe Strummer or (gulp!) Ashlee Simpson. Perhaps it's a matter of proportion. If so, it would be good to have a fair and fair-seeming guideline that says that while you only have to be minimally notable to get an article, the depth of coverage should be somehow commensurate with your notability -- anything exceeding that is vanity.

Ideas? -- Hoary 09:41, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

In general, there is little consensus on the points you raise. One of the issues is that there is a sizable minority of Wikipedians who are inclusionists to the point where they believe that any topic is appropriate for an article. There have been some efforts to develop topic-specific inclusion guidelines, and there's one on music somewhere. The biggest trouble with articles like the one you describe is that it is very time consuming to refute the individual assertions, particularly if the band is effective at promoting themselves in other online venues. The passage of time makes this worse. Just try to go and find a source that gives any information about the Blackjacks, a punk band from the mid 80s that released a couple of records, got a fair amount of college airplay, did some big shows and a lot of little ones.

( above comment by UninvitedCompany. Here are the music guidelines mentioned). Kappa

• I have to dispute that "there is a sizable minority of Wikipedians who are inclusionists to the point where they believe that any topic is appropriate for an article", I haven't met anyone like that. Actually I'm not sure many people would be voting to keep "the Snotpickers" but assuming they were included it would certainly be annoying to have a lot of unbalanced material about how great and important they are. If the "Fuck everything" tattoo is really noteworthy, there should be someone neutral who agrees, e.g. a music journalist. Maybe vanity could be defined as "excessive positive detail, lacking credible neutral sources", especially when the topic isn't significant enough to attract editors who want to balance it, or even excessive detail of any kind which is would be too much trouble to fact-check given the importance of the subject. Kappa 18:06, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proposed guideline: conflict of interest

I proposed a guideline for approaching conflicts of interest, and someone commented that this should be a subcategory of the Vanity guideline. I don't see it that way myself, but I figured I would do the Right Thing and invite you to come judge for yourself. --Yannick 03:27, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Vanity pages & speedy deletion

This page contains the following sentence: 'Vanity posters may post with the motive of increasing their own personal fame, or recognition of some group they are a part of.' That seems to strongly suggest that also pages about 'groups', such as obscure bands and businesses that don't assert notability, should be considered vanity and be subject to speedy deletion. I am aware that WP:CSD says otherwise, but to reduce the strain placed on VfD nominations I think the criterion should be expanded to include other articles that could qualify as vanity. - ulayiti (talk) 18:21, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Introduction

Who turned the first two paragraphs into legalese?

"The terms: vanity article and/or vanity information are amorphous constructs and it is therefore difficult to develop an exact criterion for the easy black-or-white diagnosis for these types of concerns."

Um... This needs revision. User:Omegatron/sig 06:27, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Autobiography

Why is it proposed that Autobiography be merged here? Autobiography is older, more concise, and frankly more sensible. This page is rather sprawling and aimless, especially given that it spends half its time trying to define what "vanity" is in the first place. Everything here could be understood by reading NPOV, NOT, and Autobiography. Isomorphic 08:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposed Wikiproject:External links

One major annoyance I have with Misplaced Pages is linkspam, as well as long lists of mediocre-quality external links at the end of articles.

I believe the length of external link lists should be limited and include only a small number of the highest-quality, reputable, and informative websites. Preferably the linked websites would also be ad-free or minimize use of ads. I have come across articles with 50+ external links (e.g. Hybrid vehicle), sorted through them (a tedious process) to only find 6 links that were truly informative and worthy. How do we expect readers to discern those 6 informative references out of such a lengthy list?

Often times, I suspect websites are added as external links by the owner/developer of that website, in effort to promote and advertise. I consider such behavior distasteful, tacky, and against the Vanity guidelines.

I propose a WikiProject where we nominate and work on such articles that need their external links weeded through to get rid of linkspam and be quality-checked. I have also put forth guidelines and philosophy regarding external links — primarily drawn upon "official" Misplaced Pages policies set forth here and on Misplaced Pages:External links. I expanded on "What should not be included in external links" and welcome discussion on these ideas. Maybe we could use these to improve the "official" Misplaced Pages external link policy.

Template:See2

If interested in helping out, please indicate your interest on the List of proposed projects. --Kmf164 23:54, 9 November 2005 (UTC)