Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Wujifa Now on Wikipedia

On November 6, 2013, a Wujifa page was launched on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wujifa. On November 24, 2013, this page was deleted.

In the spirit of sharing what I've learned, here is a brief recounting of the short life of the Wujifa page on Wikipedia.

On November 10, 2013, an entry was made calling for the Wujifa page to be deleted. After a period of back-and-forth "discussion" between the "deleters" and the "keepers", on November 24, the Wujifa page was deleted by Wikipedia.

Prior to this experience, I had made certain "moral high ground" assumptions about Wikipedia. Now having gone through this process, I've learned about the dark side of Wikipedia. And as it turns out, there is a fair amount of online documentation about the "dark side" of the Wiki world.

Here are a couple things I learned that may help temper your understanding of Wikipedia if you didn't already know this:
  • Using the argument that a page is or is not "notable" is a notable problem with Wikipedia.
  • The "standards" are not applied uniformly.
The Wujifa page was deleted on the argument that there was no "significant coverage in reliable independent sources." (Apparently, this is a boilerplate excuse to delete a page.)

One of the deleters explained "reliable independent sources" this way:
Examples of sources that might support notability: a chapter in a notable book on martial arts, a series of articles in significant martial arts magazines or journals, a journal article about the subject, newspaper or magazine articles in significant publications. I would even go so far as to include discussion of the subject by notable persons in published interviews.
There are numerous examples of Wiki pages created and edited by "insider" experts (not no-nothing independent sources) and pages with and without "reliable independent sources". I leave you to find these on your own.

The Wiki user who initiated the call to delete, has an "Editors Barnstar". What is this?
Your recent cleanups, edits, and deletions on the list of martial arts page show significant dedication and discipline. Thank you very much for your hard work and contribution to Wikipedia. For these merits, I would like to award you this Editor's Barnstar. Xiliquiern 03:14, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
So it seems that in the Wiki world, one can earn "points" for getting pages deleted. I did not know that creating a page on Wiki entered that page into a competition for points. Is the competition stacked in favor of the user with the most points? I don't know. This was my first time in the ring.

And so while Wujifa was short-lived on Wikipedia this time, I am confident that as more practitioners become aware of the elegance of its simplicity to develop the "internal" kinesthetic skillsets, then Wujifa will also become known through the traditional journalistic "reliable independent sources".


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