They want to delete the Wikipedia article

[FreeMoney]

Excellent work.

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[D҉ataWraith]

Excellent work.

Indeed. Added to the deletion discussion page on Wikipedia.

[RHorning]

I imagine it wouldn't hurt to post a link to this thread within the deletion discussion along with a note that some sources and arguments are being posted here that aren't all getting added to the deletion discussion page. I'll probably mention it there if nobody else does in the next little while.

While I like many of the sources you've come up with here, many of them really don't meet the Wikipedia definition of a reliable source.  Even the ones that do are quite weak in terms of providing any real information or constructive criticism of Bitcoins, or are using 3rd party sources of information. 

As was pointed out in the Wikipedia deletion discussion, many of these articles are circular references that use the Wikipedia article as the source of information that was used in the creation of the article.  If you don't understand the problems with that kind of reference, then I'm a bit helpless to go further in the discussion.

I did find a couple of references that meet a rough approximation of a legitimate source of information about the project from somebody who actually looked at the software.  The Hartford Advocate article is perhaps the best of these, but that gives really just one source for the article.

If any of you have written a term paper for school, I've got to ask you if your teachers would have let you get away with these kind of sources?  That is the kind of standard Wikipedia is looking for, where it would have to be something that would ultimately get you an "A" in the class for the quality of the writing and the sources you were able to find.  So far, that isn't the case and the current article is worthy of a "D" or a "C" grade at the moment.  Perhaps passing as it got the concept down right, but really doesn't work and needs a whole lot of improvement.

[NewLibertyStandard]

I imagine it wouldn't hurt to post a link to this thread within the deletion discussion along with a note that some sources and arguments are being posted here that aren't all getting added to the deletion discussion page. I'll probably mention it there if nobody else does in the next little while.

While I like many of the sources you've come up with here, many of them really don't meet the Wikipedia definition of a reliable source.  Even the ones that do are quite weak in terms of providing any real information or constructive criticism of Bitcoins, or are using 3rd party sources of information.  

As was pointed out in the Wikipedia deletion discussion, many of these articles are circular references that use the Wikipedia article as the source of information that was used in the creation of the article.  If you don't understand the problems with that kind of reference, then I'm a bit helpless to go further in the discussion.

I did find a couple of references that meet a rough approximation of a legitimate source of information about the project from somebody who actually looked at the software.  The Hartford Advocate article is perhaps the best of these, but that gives really just one source for the article.

If any of you have written a term paper for school, I've got to ask you if your teachers would have let you get away with these kind of sources?  That is the kind of standard Wikipedia is looking for, where it would have to be something that would ultimately get you an "A" in the class for the quality of the writing and the sources you were able to find.  So far, that isn't the case and the current article is worthy of a "D" or a "C" grade at the moment.  Perhaps passing as it got the concept down right, but really doesn't work and needs a whole lot of improvement.

That's why I listed them here and not on the official discussion page. I was just going through what I could find quickly and listed the more valid ones toward the top. For notability, as opposed to authenticity, circular reference should be considered completely valid if it's coming from a notable source or if there is a huge amount of non-notable, but real sources. If the President of the United States mentions the Bitcoin Wikipedia article in passing during his State of the Union address, that alone would make Bitcoin very notable. And likewise, if every poor third world person mentions it, but not a single first world mega news conglomerate, it should still be considered notable. And while I'm at it, I don't think that the single link to this page was canvassing. I'm not a Wikipedia editor and I didn't want to spam you with all my references, but I had come up with enough sources to demonstrate that real articles from notable sources/authors do exist and to demonstrate that there has been extensive worldwide exposure in many languages. I stopped posting because it was time for bed, but I assure you, I can go on all day posting similar articles and while most of them aren't significant, a certain percentage are significant and given enough time, I can find many more significant articles and hundreds and hundreds of insignificant exposure from real people, not just spam bots. The quality of the article may be C or D quality, but not all of us are English majors and for many of us a C is just fine and dandy. And while the sources might not be up to your high standards, it has been demonstrated very surely that Bitcoin is authentically what it claims to be and absolutely and without equivocation, verifiably notable. Excuse me for not posting this on your website, but I don't want to have my IP address blocked for "canvassing" since I am clearly biased, but also clearly correct.

More Sources

• The Impact of Decentralisation on Networked Computer Games Dissertation by Ashley Vaughan Smith, School of Computing, University of Derby
• The FED’s Real Monetary Problem - Thomas Luongo is a professional chemist, amateur economist and obstreperous recovering Yankee residing in North Florida.
• Times of Change
• Ludwig von Mises Institute
• Project for New Natural Autonomous Citizens
• Hideki's Random Stuff
• F.A. Hayek Institute of Canada
• Alloscomp
• ATS
• Bitcoin Networked Economy Specification
• Climate Action Camp
• Wikipedia
  
  • Electronic money
  • Anonymous internet banking
  • Crypto-anarchism
  • Peer-to-peer
  • Alternative currency
  • Assassination market
  • eCache Stellar references here!
  • Yodelbank Its references blow Bitcoin out of the water!
  • Hashcash Sooo notable!
  • Private currency
  • Proof-of-work system

Examples of Wikipedia's Standard of References
Be sure to subtract press releases, related websites, blog entries, forum threads, documentation, Slashdot and most everything else.

• AdvFS
• Ataxx
• BDS C
• Bitstream Vera
• C*Base
• CuneiForm
• Fish Fillets NG
• Free Download Manager
• Gentium
• id Tech 2Slashdot!
• Marathon
• Netscape Communicator
• Open Sound System
• Performance Co-Pilot
• Quake engine
• Synfig
• TurboCASH
• Watcom C/C++ compiler
• Compiere
• Grisbi
• HomeBank
• JFin
• jGnash
• JQuantLib
• KMyMoney
• LedgerSMB
• Mifos
• Octopus Micro Finance Suite
• Openbravo
• OpenERP
• Postbooks
• Quasar Accounting
• QuickFIX
• SQL-Ledger
• Tryton
• 99.99% of Wikipedia Software Articles

Wikipedia will have articles about 0.01% of software as soon as the editors can catch up on their backlog. But hey, we all need to know about iTunes and Windows! It'd be faster to just delete the whole encyclopedia and just start over.

Is it hard to get rights to start marking these articles for deletion? I've got time, as you can see. It'll greatly improve Wikipedia to have only 15 articles about software. Anyone else have spare time? They obviously have a large back log. They really could use our help.

Remember, objectivity. You're welcome to let this post affect you if you're not an editor, but once you become an editor, you have to ignore it. I mean at this point if you delete the article, it's obvious retaliation or a personal agenda. Can't have that kind of behavior from a Wikipedia editor!

I guess it's perfectly fine to have non-notable articles on Wikipedia so long as they're obscure. But if anyone is going to look at the article or heaven forbid, read it, then it has to be up to Wikipedia's official standards or really liked by an editor. How about you make better use of your time by focusing on software that really is lacking. You can start with the article about Mifos because if the Bitcoin article is a C or a D in Advanced Cryptography and Economics, then the Mifos article is an F- in the special needs class. The Mifos article has been around since 2007, two years longer than the Bitcoin article, surely they've had time to provide some sources. I guess the benefit of not being slashdotted is that it doesn't matter how craptastic an article is, because an editor will never notice it, so it'll just keep chugging along as a secondary press release as more notable software articles get deleted for not being notable. Oтличнaя paбoтa! Пpocтo мoлoдeц, чyвaк!

[Anonymous]

Does this qualify?

https://www.governmentsecurity.org/latest-security-news/bitcoin-p2p-cryptocurrency-bitcoin.html

[FreeMoney]

Does this qualify?

https://www.governmentsecurity.org/latest-security-news/bitcoin-p2p-cryptocurrency-bitcoin.html

No, sorry. See the information is accurate so they must have got it from here or the wiki, so it doesn't count. /sarcasm

[D҉ataWraith]

Does this qualify?

https://www.governmentsecurity.org/latest-security-news/bitcoin-p2p-cryptocurrency-bitcoin.html

No, sorry. See the information is accurate so they must have got it from here or the wiki, so it doesn't count. /sarcasm

WTF. Well, a direct copy of the Bitcoin homepage can't really be claimed as independant, no matter where it appears. I don't know that site, so despite the sophisticated layout I'll just have to assume some kind of spambot harvested the homepage and pasted a copy there. 

I realize it's kind of bitter to see something that is of interest to oneself declared non-notable, but Wikipedia's policies are there for a reason, and we can always try again later. Although it sure would be a shame to break all those outside links to the Wikipedia article...

[FreeMoney]

Does this qualify?

https://www.governmentsecurity.org/latest-security-news/bitcoin-p2p-cryptocurrency-bitcoin.html

No, sorry. See the information is accurate so they must have got it from here or the wiki, so it doesn't count. /sarcasm

WTF. Well, a direct copy of the Bitcoin homepage can't really be claimed as independant, no matter where it appears. I don't know that site, so despite the sophisticated layout I'll just have to assume some kind of spambot harvested the homepage and pasted a copy there. 

I realize it's kind of bitter to see something that is of interest to oneself declared non-notable, but Wikipedia's policies are there for a reason, and we can always try again later. Although it sure would be a shame to break all those outside links to the Wikipedia article...

Ah, when I made my comment I didn't realize it was cut and paste from here.

[RHorning]

Examples of Wikipedia's Standard of References
Be sure to subtract press releases, related websites, blog entries, forum threads, documentation, Slashdot and most everything else.

Wikipedia will have articles about 0.01% of software as soon as the editors can catch up on their backlog. But hey, we all need to know about iTunes and Windows! It'd be faster to just delete the whole encyclopedia and just start over.

Quoting horrible examples on Wikipedia isn't good form for defending why it should be deleted.  I think the point is being missed here in terms of what is a quality reference, and no I don't think having President Obama mentioning Bitcoins is a quality reference. 

I will say, on the other hand, if some celebrity of note happened to mention Bitcoins in some substantial way and talked about how it is something to check out, that there would be some genuine investigative journalism and a pretty good writer who would likely try to check out what it is all about.  That reporter going to the Bitcoins.org website and writing up an exhaustive article, fact checking the details, and publishing that piece in a respectable newspaper or on the evening television news (published on the web for reference purposes) would count as notability.

All this says is that we have a long way to go in terms of letting people know about the currency, and in terms of setting up a situation where it could be accepted for everyday transactions.

For those in academia, it would be very useful to find even a minor conference and present a paper or give a talk about Bitcoins.  It is something I've done in the past (when I held official positions in a university instead of working in industry) and could be very useful for "spreading the word" about Bitcoins in a number of ways.  At the moment I'm still a "young grasshopper" and wouldn't feel comfortable to step up to that level to defend the concept... yet.

[kiba]

They're assholes, but unfortunately, like all assholes, they don't give shit that they're assholes.

It's quite simple really. They will just delete things that they never heard of. This kind of behaviors have made people start quite a few encyclopedia wiki specializing in an area.

They're not out there to make people improve the article for them. They're out to delete shit that they think isn't notable for X crappy reasons.

[NewLibertyStandard]

They're assholes, but unfortunately, like all assholes, they don't give shit that they're assholes.

It's quite simple really. They will just delete things that they never heard of. This kind of behaviors have made people start quite a few encyclopedia wiki specializing in an area.

They're not out there to make people improve the article for them. They're out to delete shit that they think isn't notable for X crappy reasons.

No, they're not going to delete 90% of their articles. They'll only do it as a means to pressure the community to contribute. Like I said in my previous post, if the goal was to delete non-notable articles, then they would start with the completely non-notable articles, of which there are a multitude.

[kiba]

They're assholes, but unfortunately, like all assholes, they don't give shit that they're assholes.

It's quite simple really. They will just delete things that they never heard of. This kind of behaviors have made people start quite a few encyclopedia wiki specializing in an area.

They're not out there to make people improve the article for them. They're out to delete shit that they think isn't notable for X crappy reasons.

No, they're not going to delete 90% of their articles. They'll only do it as a means to pressure the community to contribute. Like I said in my previous post, if the goal was to delete non-notable articles, then they would start with the completely non-notable articles, of which there are a multitude.

If that is their goal, than it have backfired on many occasions. Perhaps this is not a systematic campaign by wikipedians, but rather the effort of a few.

[RHorning]

I disagree. The Wikipedia policies are fine, but the way they are being implemented totally opposed to the spirit of their policies. I know perfectly well that it doesn't help the cause to say it, but if the editors are doing their job correctly, then it also shouldn't hurt to point out, here on our forum, that they're goatse assholes.

Calm down.  I'm on your side here and for myself I really don't see the harm in keeping the Wikipedia article.  Yes, there are jerks that run their own little domain on Wikipedia that sometimes let that power go to their head, and I've had numerous arguments about notability where I'm usually the one to assert that the article should stay instead of being deleted.

I've also spent my time as a Wikimedia administrator (not Wikipedia, but a couple of its sister projects), where I've had to deal with the problems that come from the real "assholes" that are constantly trying to wreck the projects.  Sometimes after being on the offensive for so long trying to stop people from vandalism and some flagrant "junk" that when somebody comes along to put something in that is legitimate but lacks some quality and seems a bit amateurish often gets mistaken for the blatant vandalism.  Seriously, unless you've spent the time trying to fight some of these real creeps that make it a game to wreck stuff out of spite, you don't know half of the problems that administrators deal with.  It is a mostly thankless job that is critical to the proper functioning of systems like this.  It also consumes a whole bunch of time, which is why I don't do it any more (that and I was "kicked off" due to inactivity).

If that is their goal, than it have backfired on many occasions. Perhaps this is not a systematic campaign by wikipedians, but rather the effort of a few.

One of the things that is impacting the Bitcoins article is a dispute between the "inclusionists" and the "deletionists".  It is hard to explain this other than to say that this is two major political factions on Wikipedia that has its roots to even before Wikipedia itself was started as a project.  The "inclusionists" (of which I'll admit I'm in that camp for the most part) feel that the efforts of volunteers is precious and that "good faith edits" ought to be preserved as much as possible, even if the quality suffers a bit.  There is much more to this philosophy, but a typical inclusionist would want to keep articles like Bitcoins in general.

The other camp, the "deletionists" feel that Wikipedia ought to be constantly raising its standards and that "cruft" needs to be eliminated to discourage poor quality edits.  At the extreme end, some editors and especially administrators get real punchy with the deletion button and start to smack nearly everything in sight that doesn't meet their definition of quality.  The most extreme are those who feel that only articles already at the quality of a "featured article" (something that appears on the "front page" of Wikipedia and represents the highest quality articles on the project) should remain and all else should be deleted.  I hate to say it, but the deletionists seem to have an upper hand right now on Wikipedia.  They can be fought back, but it turns into a political contest.

The problem here is that those joining into this fight for the first time are encountering some of the combatants in this war over policy, and unfortunately the two sides have been going at it for so long (and sometimes there is more than just the two sides) that collectively they dismiss the newcomers.  It is sort of like jumping into a floor fight in congress between the Democrats and the Republicans, without even knowing that political parties even exist in the first place, and seeing some legislation you care about get trashed in the process.  That is precisely what is happening on this particular deletion review, and it is unfortunate that the article got picked for that particular fight.  For myself, I don't think it would have been nominated except for the fact that it appeared on Slashdot and got the attention of the deletionists.

[RHorning]

I know I'm biased, but from an objective perspective, Bitcoin is very clearly notable according to the dictionary definition of the word notable, and is much more notable, in the Wikipedia sense, than scores and scores and scores and scores and scores of other software articles.

Notability is something that, thankfully, becomes apparent over time.  I am suggesting that the word you are looking for is novelty, as the idea behind Bitcoins is certainly a very novel concept and something that easily could be patented.  I don't know if Satoshi has formally filed for a patent on Bitcoins, but it would be a good idea to at least formally express that the concept is "in the public domain" in terms of patentability or to have it patented and then have the patent given to some strong 501 (c) 3 non-profit that could keep patent trolls from claiming credit.

Anyway, the novelty of Bitcoins is that it does something unique and interesting that hasn't been done before, tying together several different ideas into one concept.  Being novel is certainly something noteworthy, but the question then becomes.... has it been noted or noticed by anybody other than the small community involved in its development?  That is the question that is being raised here.

Clearly having Slashdot note Bitcoins is something that brought a huge amount of attention to the project.  That implies that few people were even aware of it prior to that article publication.  If it were already notable, that wouldn't be happening.  I sincerely believe that over time, the fact that Bitcoins are noteworthy will make Bitcoins notable too.  This isn't something isolated to just Wikipedia but to other organizations too, but pushing ahead and letting people know about Bitcoins in a greater sense.  As word starts to spread, more people will notice.

I guess I'm trying to turn this experience into something positive for the Bitcoins community.  Trying to figure out how to spread the word about Bitcoins is certainly going to be useful for everybody involved.  If you want to call this evangalism, so be it.  If this article going up for deletion will get people motivated to write up scholarly papers, submit something to the ACM Journal, or to get more attention in scholarly/academic circles, I can see nothing but good coming from such efforts in general.

[Babylon]

There are also other wiki's out there with a less deletionist approach.

[em3rgentOrdr]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

"This page has been deleted. The deletion and move log for the page are provided below for reference.

10:42, 30 July 2010 Polargeo (talk | contribs) deleted "Bitcoin" ‎ (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bitcoin)"

I made a new forum post to restart the discussion, now that it's official: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=652.0

[dwdollar]

So it's official?  We are now popular enough to be recognized that we aren't noteworthy enough.

Oh, the irony.

[Anonymous]

They're assholes, but unfortunately, like all assholes, they don't give shit that they're assholes.

It's quite simple really. They will just delete things that they never heard of. This kind of behaviors have made people start quite a few encyclopedia wiki specializing in an area.

They're not out there to make people improve the article for them. They're out to delete shit that they think isn't notable for X crappy reasons.

No, they're not going to delete 90% of their articles. They'll only do it as a means to pressure the community to contribute. Like I said in my previous post, if the goal was to delete non-notable articles, then they would start with the completely non-notable articles, of which there are a multitude.

A Wikinomics site?
-focusing on economics and currencies might be a nice thing to start up.It would be good for a number of reasons including an educational tool.A complete resource devoted to this one subject would be great.Oh just think of the arguments lol

Anyone want to witness a gigantic Austrian v Keynesian cage match ? 

[NewLibertyStandard]

This quoted post was deleted without notice or explanation. If it was deleted by a moderator, in the future please send me the original post in a private message and then edit it with in-line explanations instead of just deleting it. Please let me know if it was not deleted by a moderator or if there isn't an obvious technical explanation. I would really like to know whether my account has been compromised. Please send me a private message if the forum logs IP addresses which people use to access their account so that I can try to figure out whether an existing user accessed my account. If you accessed my account or deleted this quoted post, please fess up.

Edit: There is a chance that it somehow accidentally got deleted while I was editing it or at some other time, but I don't think that is what happened since the final version of it existed long enough for it to be cached by Google and then after that cache, RHorning replied to it. That all happened long after I stopped editing it.

Thanks for the previous post, RHorning. I skimmed through what you wrote and didn't much pay attention to it at first. After I wrote everything below, I skimmed through it again and appreciated it much more than at first. I very rarely get upset, but on the rare occasion that something incenses me on the Internet, I don't see anything wrong with expressing myself. I figure that since it's such a rare occurrence, the cause must be worthy of my indignity. The video clip I posted below reinforced this view. Anyway, I'm only upset while I write about it. I don't really even think about it once I finish ranting and raving like a lunatic.

I know I'm biased, but from an objective perspective, Bitcoin is very clearly notable according to the dictionary definition of the word notable, and is much more notable, in the Wikipedia sense, than scores and scores and scores and scores and scores of other software articles. If Bitcoin was just some random program I really liked, I wouldn't really give a shit whether it got deleted according to the notability policy. But from a technical and economical perspective, Bitcoin is breaking so much ground, it's a complete joke to say that it's not notable. And all this while every little software side project sits undisturbed with links only to a press release and project website. I know I'm upset, but it really isn't because I'm in love with Bitcoin, it's because it offends me that something as notable as Bitcoin is getting deleted on the basis of notability from one of the most notable encyclopidias in the world because some jackass editor doesn't know shit about the significance of Bitcoin in regard to cryptography, general computer science, economics, currencies, sociology, money laundering, law enforcement, libertarianism, anarchism, democracy, general government influence and probably a dozen other notable topics.

Here are a few related articles for anyone who is interested.

• Wikipedia, Notability, and Open Source Software This article led me to the source of the phrase "I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I'd heard the phrase before, but had never seen the source. If you haven't seen it, it's more worth watching than the rest of these articles are worth reading!   or rather
• Deletionist Morons
• Rescued by Wikipedia
• Open Letter To Wikipedia Editors: Yes, Matt Cutts Is Notable
• On Wikipedia, storms, teacups, and _why's notability
• Wikipedia’s Notability Requirement
• Wikipedia’s Notability Requirement Fails for FLOSS
• Proposal:Change Wikipedia Notability Guidelines
• Charles Matthews on Notability
• And many more...

There should seriously be an article about the public acknowledgment of the idiocy of the Wikipedia notability policy. It would clearly be notable enough.  

[FreeMoney]

That post was deleted? I don't get why at all.