The Wikipedia Knowledge Dump (WikiDumper.org)

Thanks for making WikiDumper a success. Started less than a month ago, when the word “WikiDumper” had zero Google hits, we now find over 25,000 Google pages with this term. The site has received over 70,000 visits.

Press in Germany, Italy, and the US have been favorable, and the site has been warmly reviewed in web sites associated with The Chronicle of Higher Education, USA Today, Fortune, Der Spiegel, CNET, Gawker, Boing Boing, and more. Radio shows have shown interest. Thanks again for all your support, and please give me suggestions for improvement.

In an interesting turn of events, I stumbled upon a WikiDumper article that has been added to the Wikipedia. Amusingly, it is currently being considered for deletion. The following is a snapshot of the latest reasons for deletion of WikiDumper from Wikipedia. Enjoy!

[Wikidumper.org is]:

- Non-notable. Although mentioned by the Associated Press, the site doesn't have multiple non-trivial sources.

- Weak Delete - Wow. Talk about irony. Anyway, the AP story linked to in the article is actually about another website. The Alexa page rank of 244,798 doesn't exactly impress either. I'm still kind of torn since I like the idea of a blog that keeps a record of deleted WP content. However, in the end it clearly doesn't satisfy WP:WEB.

- Delete; As I see it, it's just a blog someone created earlier this month. Right now, it fails WP:WEB. One mention at the end of a newspaper article (often where less important details are placed) doesn't quite cut it, and as above, the Alexa rank is weak. Perhaps later this will meet the inclusion guidelines, but it doesn't now.

- Delete bloggish, and fails WP:WEB.- Delete per nom. Sounds like an interesting idea. -Merge to Clifford A. Pickover. Seems more proper to be there.

From the AP article: "Archive.org isn't the only site trying to save the ever-changing Web. Wikipedia.com, which constantly regurgitates itself with user-inputted data, is now being watched by wikidumper.blogsot.com. Any information not truthful enough to make it into Wikipedia is probably dubious twice over, but Wikidumper helps provide some oversight to the editors of Wikipedia, who can take down an entry for any number of reasons."
- Delete per nom. - Merge per Yanksox - Delete per Bobby and Crystallina.
- Delete, even when I like the idea a lot (and already subscribe to their RSS feed). This is more of project space material, regrettably, likely not famous enough yet to warrant an article space article. I don't mind it if someone recreates it later when there's no question about this thing's notability, but I'm sceptical on whether or not it ever will get there.
- Merge as above, the last thing we need is someone having a proof that we are biased against our critics

-Comment - Wikipedia's numerous critics will find bias no matter what, because that critics do. We should be concerned with enforcing Wikipedia's consensus-built policies consistently, rather than with allowing external criticisms to dictate the actions of the community. IMO, this is a very weak arguement against deletion.

- And what exactly is "critical" about Wikidumper anyway? It's not like they have an agenda of "look at all these valid and well-sourced articles that they've unjustly deleted"; they publish just about everything that may be deleted later (ranging from blatant BJAODN material to little-known topics). I'd be a little bit hesitant to lump them among critical sites; at best they're doing a service to the community, at worst they're just making people say "look at that ridiculous stuff they published - but good thing it looks like they deleted it."

- Comment: How can it be said that WikiDumper is non-notable if it has 24,600 Google hits and 39 articles in Google news? Isn't this objective evidence that it is notable?

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia discussion "Articles_for_deletion/Wikidumper ". This entry is a fragment of a larger work. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

# posted by Cliff Pickover @ 12:27 PM