Think of it like code in an active open-source project. Someone needs to maintain the article: update it when house style changes, evaluate any new contributions to it as being valid or not, etc. Like code experiencing code-rot, a Wikipedia article rots if editors don't give it active attention.

This has exactly the implications you'd expect: it means that articles about things that don't change, are easier to keep around than are articles about things that might change; which are in turn easier to keep around than are articles about things that definitely will change.

Living people — where the article is basically living biography for them — are in that last category.

The "notability" requirement can be translated into editor-ese as a combination of 1. "how many people could we find who could contribute to this page", and 2. "how much demand is there for Wikipedia — rather than some other website — to do the work of keeping this."

Re: the first point about contribution, this is why Wikipedia doesn't let people be their own primary source — it's because, when that primary-source person eventually stops maintaining the page, who will then be able to take over the maintenance? If that's "nobody", then to prevent that, the page shouldn't be allowed in the first place.

Re: the second point about demand — the Pokemon Pikachu has its own Wikipedia page, because people expect Wikipedia specifically to have an article about Pikachu. Other Pokemon do not — because there's already Bulbapedia around to satisfy the demand for an encyclopedia with articles about Pokemon, and the pages from it are easily found in any search engine. If a different set of editors are willing to take on the maintenance burden for those articles in their own domain — and are doing a decent job of it — then why should Wikipedia's editors duplicate that effort?

The answer is Deletionists, people who are unable to contribute with actual knowledge and information, so they have decided that their contribution is destruction of knowledge and information.

The Wikipedia bureaucracy, as it exists, is unfortunately not equipped to handle these types of book burners…

First of all, Wikipedia has banned all T-Mobile IPs from being able to even log in to my account... 10 years ago when I tried to post my biography there, they rejected it for lack of notability... Twitter also requires an entry to be published on Wikipedia for artists, now I could probably wait forever until someone still never writes one about me, or I could choose to pay a renowned publication to run a fluff piece on me like many other musicians do.

I am so tired of the manufactured gatekeeping nonsense that is required of me just to make music and be heard, no wonder why so many quit the business... ugh.

To prevent me having a Wikipedia page.

The reason people want their content on Wikipedia is because a Wikipedia page signal a certain notability compared to a random web page. So the inclusionists want to eat the cake and keep it too.

I've had success appealing notability deletions in the past, but it was a pain in the ass, especially after I just spent hours researching, sourcing, writing, referencing, and proofing the article. I never made a new article again after that.

Sadly, some of the admins there are power tripping idiots who will also use random loopholes to forbid edits that don't reflect their own ideologies, often in direct contrast to Wikipedia's own guidelines.

Like any bureaucracy, it has become a cabal of aristocrats who are in it for the power and control. Regular lowly editors generally don't have much recourse. It made me gave up on editing Wikipedia. Became an editor in 2004 and the climate has changed dramatically since then, from "newbies welcome, please edit" to "this is my private library, don't touch anything!"

But there is a difference between having someone's name listed in a table on a page in Wikipedia, and that person needing an entire Wikipedia article about them.

If there's only one notable fact about someone, then that fact is data, and is best recorded together with other data of the same shape, to put it in the context of its meaning.

It's only when there are many distinct notable facts about someone, all of different shapes, where the best way to connect all those facts together is in carefully-formatted prose, that the right way to record that data becomes "a distinct Wikipedia page for that topic."

Wikipedia's guideline for the notability of voice actors is:[1]

> 1. Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions; or

> 2. Has made unique, prolific or innovative contributions to a field of entertainment.

This can be difficult to define. I'd suggest you instead follow the guideline of notability for people generally, which is:[2]

> A person is presumed to be notable if they have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.

I'm always sorry to hear about someone that has gotten frustrated editing Wikipedia. Even though I'd discourage it as a conflict of interest, editors have successfully created articles for friends by simply citing reliable secondary sources that cover them. I'd suggest you give it another try if such sources exist and reach out in the Teahouse[3] if you need help.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse

Regarding bizarre pages that remain (but yours does not): a daily cloud -- yes, read that right... a cloud(!) -- has its own Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_(cloud)

The current editors and admins will die someday. Who will replace them? If only the worst kind of people bother making the effort to become the next editors and admins, then Wikipedia will decline in quality and eventually die and be replaced by other sources, like fandom.

If that is the primary standard for inclusion (or “notability”) it is a huge shame and a wasted opportunity.

FWIW I personally am in the camp that Bruce Faulconer is probably sufficiently recognizable that a small stub article is justified and better than the redirect they added. However, this article skips over a lot of the story, possible disingenuously so.

OTOH, similarly small articles like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Godfree are all over wikipedia, the backlash seems completely unjustified.

Look! I'm going to promote a rather dull controversy to an online magazine and the front page of Hacker News! I'm 100% confident that this process will effect justice and result in only 100% positive and desirable contributions to Wikipedia! cough

Perhaps the issue was that Philip Roth was unable to sufficiently demonstrate his identity? Of course, Wikipedia can't take a random editor's word when they say "I am this person and this is the truth", then anyone could say anything. There has to be some citation, for example I've seen someone cite a tweet for simple biographical information (e.g. "today is my birthday").

And yet it's still really good.

People like Larry Sanger prattle on about how awful wikipedia is (and make multiple websites for collecting mistakes, which mostly seem to be blank), rarely with any concrete evidence. In fact Sanger in particular refuses to browse wikipedia at all - except that he does but through a proxy, because giving wikipedia.org traffic is "icky". I pointed out that this is childish behaviour and he blocked me, go figure.

"Decentralized" <> "unmoderated", "without content standards", or "without editors". Is there a more decentralized knowledge resource of general significance? Hosting happens to be centralized, only because nobody else cares enough to rehost it themselves (which the license allows you to do).

That is very explicitly not a goal of Wikipedia. Of course you're free to disagree with what Wikipedia ought to be, but they're at least fairly clear and explicit about their own goals.

Can you expand on this? I wasn't aware Google penalized Wikipedia now.

Why?

It would be interesting if the database of facts driving Wikipedia were available to all, and Wikipedia is recognized as providing one of potentially many ways to organize/publish that database for human reading. In other words, if I want to add information about a composer and her composition to the database I can do so, and if Wikipedia chooses only to publish the composition but not the composer, that is entirely their decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ARM_Cortex-M&type...

They’ve spent too much time wallowing in the unreal realm of the internet; they fear the light of day. If people were to shine a light on them, they’d die of embarrassment.

I would like to point out that this is, effectively, a very clever way of saying that Wikipedia is controlled by a tiny group of people whose goals for Wikipedia do not match the expectations of the general public.

Judging by this case, composing the music for a TV show watched for years by millions of people doesn't count, but composing something performed in a theatre and watched by far fewer people is officially notable:

> Has written musical theatre of some sort (includes musicals, operas, etc.) that was performed in a notable theatre that had a reasonable run, as such things are judged in their particular situation, context, and time.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(music)#C...

A reasonable alternative would be for the notability requirement simply to be that the general public may run into the topic/person (and presumably therefore be interested to know more) OR may ask a question to which the article would contain the answer.

Anyone who’s creative work is published or included in a movie or whatever should automatically be included under such a rule.

It would also be sensible for the default in the case of dispute to be to keep the article unless the actual content itself is completely unverifiable, as long as there is some half way plausible argument for doing so.

There should be no sense of achievement for or gratitude towards anyone removing facts from an encyclopaedia.

Any editor who makes removing articles on notability grounds their raison d’etre demonstrates only arrogance and smugness.

From the info I have, the only criteria he may meet is #1 for in the first group, and it is not actually clear that "soundtrack for DBZ" is a notable composition. for a TV show soundtrack to qualify as notable, it would need to be something often written about. For example, if a show is discussed for its music almost as often as for its plot, then sure the soundtrack is probably notable. I don't think that actually applies here.

And even if so, if he is only really known for one work (which pretty much is the case), that would generally be merged with the article for that work. So he could be mentioned in the "Sound Track of DBZ" article if one existed, or the "soundtrack" section of the main DBZ article.

------

Composers, songwriters, librettists or lyricists, may be notable if they meet at least one of the following criteria:

1. Has credit for writing or co-writing either lyrics or music for a notable composition. 2. Has written musical theatre of some sort (includes musicals, operas, etc.) that was performed in a notable theatre that had a reasonable run, as such things are judged in their particular situation, context, and time. 3. Has had a work used as the basis for a later composition by a songwriter, composer or lyricist who meets the above criteria. 4. Has written a composition that has won (or in some cases been given a second or other place) in a major music competition not established expressly for newcomers. 5. Has been listed as a major influence or teacher of a composer, songwriter or lyricist that meets the above criteria. 6. Appears at reasonable length in standard reference books on their genre of music.

Where possible, composers or lyricists with insufficient verifiable material to warrant a reasonably detailed article should be merged into the article about their work. When a composer or lyricist is known for multiple works, such a merger may not be possible.

---

Composers and performers outside mass media traditions may be notable if they meet at least one of the following criteria:

1. Is frequently covered in publications devoted to a notable music sub-culture.

2. Has composed a number of notable melodies, tunes or standards used in a notable music genre.

3. Is cited in reliable sources as being influential in style, technique, repertory or teaching for a particular music genre.

4. Is cited by reliable sources as having established a tradition or school in a particular music genre.

5. Has been listed as a significant musical influence on musicians or composers who meet the above criteria.

The problem is that this takes SO MUCH time and energy. Most give up.

Taking time out of your day to voluntarily improve a free resource is already energy intensive without also expending that energy battling with zealots.

Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying providing proper references takes too much time, I'm saying that having to fight with people to be permitted to keep content while building references takes much more energy again.

But as a lay person reading your post, I do not know what "Deaf Cultures and Deaf Educators" is. Is this a book? I tried googling for it but didn't find it. Wikipedia does have an article on Deaf culture (lowercase c): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture -- it was created in March of 2004. I am not sure about "Deaf educators", but Wikipedia does have an article on Deaf education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_education and on Dead studies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_studies and on Schools for the deaf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_for_the_deaf (this one is in notable need of expansion). It looks like the separate article for Deaf education sprung into being in the early 2010s and previously redirect-merged to deaf culture.

I think it's at least possible here that you were not discriminated against as part of an anti-diversity agenda, but rather that you misunderstood some of Wikipedia's needlessly complicated rules or maybe didn't present what you were trying to add in the right way.

I went back through the articles for deletion discussion for all of 2004 and could not find a discussion about deleting an article by the name you said. I went through the full list of deleted articles in 2001-2004 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_log -- and searched for "deaf" and didn't find anything relevant ever. If your pages were deleted after 2004, they're only visible in the modern deletion log and that requires an exact title match unless you're an administrator, which I am not. So unfortunately I think without more information it's going to be hard to help you 18 years later.

But I'm pretty sure it was not because Wikipedia editors were anti-diversity.

The criteria for notability on wikipedia are not clear and documented. They are a joke, with a camp of zealots deleting everything they can delete - maybe they see it as a hobby, maybe they need it to feel powerful. The criteria do not matter as long as such people are allowed to wield power. And the english Wikipedia is actually the good one in this category, the german is already completely broken because of this clientele.

You are right, it could be forked, but in practice it's unlikely humanity has the capacity to run two such projects. Thus Wikipedia - if it does not course correct - will sink slowly into irrelevance, be flanked with better wikis for specific topics (sadly often proprietary platforms/commercial projects) and then, hopefully, what you describe will really happen and a new Wikipedia will be forked, learning from the mistakes that are completely obvious to everyone outside of that current in-group of contributors.

But it's genuinely hard to figure out why you'd post something like this when spending literally 3 seconds on a Google search shows that you just completely made it up and didn't do any kind of search at all. Why tell a lie that is so easily and completely disproven?

[0] https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0269023/

They are, in a word, trolling.

And I am inclined to think calling them out is a good thing.

Why? Who is he and what has he done that might make Wikipedia dislike him?