10 ms·

Perl articles are being memory wiped from Wikipedia

43 points by leejo 9mo ago

Philpax 9mo ago
The reasons for deletion don't seem that outlandish to me. I'd rather not see them deleted, but I also don't think this outcome is that surprising, nor would I describe it as a "memory wipe."
- leejo 9mo ago
  The CPAN page on Wikipedia has existed for 24 years, has dozens of references, yet an editor nominated it for deletion - I can't help but feel that as hostile. Fortunately this one has been voted "keep", but still...
  - Telaneo 9mo ago
    The person who nominated it for deletion changed their opinion after suitable sources were found, and the article was thus kept within a day. That hardly seems hostile to me, but rather just someone trying to uphold Wikipedia's sourcing and notability requirements.
    - leejo 9mo ago
      I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that. As stated below in several other comments, none of this makes sense and the Wikipedia editors hiding behind "this is the policy, you do not get to question it" stinks. The original user withdrew their deletion suggestion and added the "This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources." banner, sure. Why didn't they just do that in the first place? Instead they looked at an article that had existed for twenty years, with a comprehensive history of changes, had lots of information, links, and [albeit primary] sources; they did some cursory Googling, then suggested it for deletion - with a deadline of 7 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CPAN&diff=1327587836&oldid=1311230687 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CPAN&diff=1327587... Wikipedia literally has its own page to suggest that you don't do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence#What_this_means_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence... Wikipedia's own policies around deletion mean it's easy to delete articles you don't particularly like - if they are old enough they probably lack secondary sources. You can't inform users who would be able to contribute off-Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing#Stealth_canvassing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing#Stealth_c... which means it's unlikely they will be updated before the deadline passes. Many of these articles were contributed by people who have long moved on, and few of us are paying attention to every possible thing on Wikipedia. Twenty years of history deleted in a week. That's wrong. This feels like the actions of a newly promoted editor, inexperienced, and eager to start "cleaning up" Wikipedia, which it is damaging. It also feels like the actions of an editor who, when editing another article, saw that the thing they were adding didn't point to what they expected on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White_Camel_award&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White_Camel_award... # instead of adding a page to disambiguate, they decided to go on a crusade to purge articles that had existed for twenty years. And because these were mostly articles that predate Wikipedia's sourcing policies, they knew it was likely they would succeed. As I've stated in one of the talk threads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejebay-20251223152100-OwenX-20251223150200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejeba... # I'm not particularly concerned about the restoration of some of the articles, instead I'm more concerned about the blunt application of policies that means important reference, history, and culture are being deleted.
      - Telaneo 9mo ago
        > Why didn't they just do that in the first place? Because they didn't find any. If secondary sources don't seem to exist, then there's no hope to begin with. Someone else found them, and that instantly made it clear that it's fixable. > they did some cursory Googling, then suggested it for deletion - with a deadline of 7 days: I fail to see the problem here, unless you have a problem with only getting 7 days. That's policy as far as I know,[1] and it would be nice to at least get two weeks, but I can't blame the individual proposer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Proposed_deletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Prop... Chesterton's fence goes both ways. Wikipedia policies are there for non-obvious reasons in some cases. > You can't inform users who would be able to contribute off-Wikipedia: Canvassing is one thing. Productively finding sources for an article is another. Wikipedia has had many a talk page drown in off-wiki people come in and make an account to prevent some thing from happening, none of them understanding why the thing is happening, none of them understanding Wikipedia policy, and none of them caring. Inviting these people to discussions is not productive and just a bad time for everyone. If you invite one or two people to actually improve the article, so it can survive on it's own merit, I can't imagine anyone having a problem with that. The equivalent on-wiki thing of just pinging relevant editors is common and encouraged. > This feels like the actions of a newly promoted editor, inexperienced, and eager to start "cleaning up" Wikipedia, The user in question has no special user rights (they were automatically updated to an extended confirmed user over a year ago), and has a few decently long articles under their belt. > It also feels like the actions of an editor who, when editing another article, saw that the thing they were adding didn't point to what they expected on Wikipedia: > instead of adding a page to disambiguate, they decided to go on a crusade to purge articles that had existed for twenty years. And because these were mostly articles that predate Wikipedia's sourcing policies, they knew it was likely they would succeed. This is a rather unfavourable view of the situation, and not really one made in good faith. I can agree that that article shouldn't have just been turned into a redirect, but that redirect was made by a different user to the one who's been nominating articles for deletion, and I can't see any obvious connection. Articles being older than the sourcing requirements also do not exclude them from those requirements. They usually get a break because of that, but it's been well over 10 years by this point. > As I've stated in one of the talk threads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejeba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejeba... # I'm not particularly concerned about the restoration of some of the articles, instead I'm more concerned about the blunt application of policies that means important reference, history, and culture are being deleted. Owen who responded to your post makes a good point. I'd argue that if Wikipedia deleting an article about something amounts to the deletion or destruction of history, reference or culture, then thing in question probably has some notability problems. Wikipedia makes it easier to find information about a particular topic, but can't be the only reasonable source of things. There has to at least have been reliable sources for the article to have been based on, even if they aren't easily available at this point.
- dpark 9mo ago
  Deleted pages are no longer accessible, meaning the history of changes is gone. “Memory wipe” seems reasonable.
  - Telaneo 9mo ago
    The changelog is still there on the servers and can be accessed by the Wikipedia administrators. The page can also be restored with it's full changelog, although I don't think that's done very often.
    - smonff 9mo ago
      I makes very hard to re-start a new article. Why start from scratch when we could re-use and improve the old article? This is discouraging. I am moderately tech-savvy and had a WikiPedia account for years. But going into the deletion-review process WikiPedia bureaucracy is a lot of work. Pretty honestly I looked at the process and it looks so complicated that I think I would rather write a brand new article.
      - Telaneo 9mo ago
        Articles are usually deleted for good reasons, so it's usually discouraged to do this for those same reasons. If it's just due to notability, you could probably ask an admin to give you a hand and give you the text of the old revision in the draft space, although I've never seen it done. It's usually a better bet to start of a blank slate, since that doesn't carry with it the smell of a previously deleted article, even if that deletion might not have been made with good reason. > But going into the deletion-review process WikiPedia bureaucracy is a lot of work. Pretty honestly I looked at the process and it looks so complicated that I think I would rather write a brand new article. The new article part of that is probably somewhat intended behaviour. The deletion-review process isn't as bad as it seems from all the pages. They're just very verbose just to have everything documented. People are usually nice enough to point in the right direction if something is amiss. They just want things done correctly and will guide the process thusly.
pella 9mo ago
The new rule of notability: if it’s no longer in Google’s index, it basically doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion... "From a Google search, I wasn’t able to find" appears multiple times on that page alone.
- jorams 9mo ago
  The relevant part is before that: > This article is exclusively sourced on primary sources. The Google search is the nominator looking for an alternative source that could make it notable, something earlier editors failed to establish.
- snvzz 9mo ago
  In short, Google decides what stays in Wikipedia. Neat. Not.
  - orwin 9mo ago
    Not really,if that thing is cited on notable papers or books, it stays too.
    - snvzz 9mo ago
      Except if Google decides otherwise. And then Wikipedia follows suit.
      - literalAardvark 9mo ago
        No. The Google search wouldn't even have happened had the article had sources listed for the claim.
        snvzz 9mo ago
        Thus Google gets the final word on whether an article is deleted.
cedilla 9mo ago
I'll never understand the amount of vitriol Wikipedia volunteers must receive. Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others? I find this kind of behaviour and rethoric wholly unacceptable.
- pella 9mo ago
  Consider the other perspective: how should Perl programmers feel when Google's index becomes the main criterion for what is considered important or not? This creates a circular dependency that can erase genuine technical contributions from the historical record.
  - smonff 9mo ago
    Google index is tailored for each individual. Persons with interest in breeding cats won’t be served Perl results. If Google index becomes a criterion of notability, we are in a deep deep shit.
- leejo 9mo ago
  > Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others? FWIW I don't see this as an attack (with, perhaps, the exception of a couple of comments in the linked thread) and posted the link to the reddit thread as I see it more as an interesting observation around the myriad issues facing "legacy" languages and communities. To wit: * Google appears to be canon for finding secondary sources, according to the various arguments in the deletion proposals, yet we're all aware of how abysmal Google's search has been for a while now. * What's the future of this policy given the fractured nature of the web these days, walled gardens, and now LLMs? * An article's history appears to be irrelevant in the deletion discussion: the CPAN page (now kept) had 24 years of history on Wikipedia, with dozens of sources, yet was nominated for deletion. * Link rot is pervasive, we all knew this, but just how much of Wikipedia is being held up by the waybackmachine? * Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.
DrScientist 9mo ago
Wikipedia has a page for an Egyptian King that ruled for perhaps only 10 years 5000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anedjib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anedjib Why is that still relevant? Or to put it another way when does the contemporary move into interesting history?
- pwdisswordfishy 9mo ago
  The deletion proposals do not mention "interesting" anywhere.
  - TZubiri 9mo ago
    Correct, the cited factor is lack of significant coverage.
- EdwardDiego 9mo ago
  When did the Perl Monks run a kingdom? Apples and oranges.
  - skylurk 9mo ago
    Or more importantly, when did the Perl Monks build a pyramid? Plenty of rulers are long forgotten.
    - DrScientist 9mo ago
      A building that wasn't a pyramid, but had simple step sided walls is only significant in retrospect! ie it only became of historic interest after the fact as people retrospectively thought it might have influenced later more significant buildings. While I agree a page about Perl Monks isn't likely to be that significant - I was making a general philosophical point. Eg how do you know that PerlMonks doesn't end up being one of the earliest examples for self-organising elearning - a movement that ends up replacing Universities in the future? In terms of the details of this page leejo posts are more substantive.
  - 9mo ago
mrjay42 9mo ago
So this is about PerlMonks, which I knew nothing about until today. I searched it, the site is down The Wikipedia article is deleted This is pure loss of information somehow. I and a lot of other people in the future will never know what "perlmonks" is/are, how important it was?, etc. etc. The logic seems to be: if tomorrow Stack Exchange disappears, the Wikipedia article will be deleted? If yes, then that makes zero sense.
- card_zero 9mo ago
  That article wouldn't be deleted, because I can find 20 or so references in paper publications saying things like "The Stack Exchange family of websites is a Q&A service for developers and other technical roles. If you’re stuck on a problem, the chances are someone else was too and turned to Stack Exchange for help", or in some cases doing a quick bio of Jeff Atwood or mentioning codinghorror. Hmm, OTOH I can also find multiple paper references to perlmonks, such as "Perlmonks is a web bulletin board dedicated to Perl. It’s not specifically a help desk, but if you’ve done your homework and ask a good question, you’re likely to get top-notch help very quickly" - that's from the O'Reilly Perl book. Sometimes I'm overoptimistic about these things, because I want to keep every obscure article. Well, Perlmonks is still mentioned on the articles for Perl, Outline of the Perl programming language, Perl language structure, and Perl Foundation. (This is because deletionists are lazy and don't actually like doing a thorough job.) So I could see Perlmonks becoming a redirect to one of those pages, which could describe it in a section. Similarly, if Stack Exchange faded into obscurity, it might be rolled into a section of Jeff Atwood's page (or vice versa).
pella 9mo ago
perlmonks HN https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=perlmonks.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=perlmonks.org HN-Search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=perlmonks https://hn.algolia.com/?query=perlmonks
csvance 9mo ago
The PerlMonks page was in death as it was in life: completely unreadable.
- smonff 9mo ago
  Still active and relevant for some people from those communities, though. Without mentioning the historic value.
pella 9mo ago
"Self-Organizing Social Learning Through the Monastery Gates" ( Rose M. Baker & David L. Passmore : The Pennsylvania State University ; 2005 ) "Abstract An example of an emergent, self-organizing on-line social learning system is available at the PerlMonks site at http://perlmonks.org/ http://perlmonks.org/. Perl is a scripting language commonly used to as an interface between databases and web pages. Provided in this paper is a review of principles of emergent, self-organizing systems from a perspective of learning systems as well as case study of PerlMonks as self-organizing eLearning." PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rose-Baker/publication/268016670_Self-Organizing_Social_Learning_Through_the_Monastery_Gates/links/554cdc6f0cf21ed2135e5a8f/Self-Organizing-Social-Learning-Through-the-Monastery-Gates.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rose-Baker/publication/... via google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22perlmonks.org%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22perlmonks.org%22

43 points by leejo 9mo ago

The reasons for deletion don't seem that outlandish to me. I'd rather not see them deleted, but I also don't think this outcome is that surprising, nor would I describe it as a "memory wipe."

leejo 9mo ago
The CPAN page on Wikipedia has existed for 24 years, has dozens of references, yet an editor nominated it for deletion - I can't help but feel that as hostile. Fortunately this one has been voted "keep", but still...
- Telaneo 9mo ago
  The person who nominated it for deletion changed their opinion after suitable sources were found, and the article was thus kept within a day. That hardly seems hostile to me, but rather just someone trying to uphold Wikipedia's sourcing and notability requirements.
  - leejo 9mo ago
    I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that. As stated below in several other comments, none of this makes sense and the Wikipedia editors hiding behind "this is the policy, you do not get to question it" stinks. The original user withdrew their deletion suggestion and added the "This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources." banner, sure. Why didn't they just do that in the first place? Instead they looked at an article that had existed for twenty years, with a comprehensive history of changes, had lots of information, links, and [albeit primary] sources; they did some cursory Googling, then suggested it for deletion - with a deadline of 7 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CPAN&diff=1327587836&oldid=1311230687 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CPAN&diff=1327587... Wikipedia literally has its own page to suggest that you don't do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence#What_this_means_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence... Wikipedia's own policies around deletion mean it's easy to delete articles you don't particularly like - if they are old enough they probably lack secondary sources. You can't inform users who would be able to contribute off-Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing#Stealth_canvassing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Canvassing#Stealth_c... which means it's unlikely they will be updated before the deadline passes. Many of these articles were contributed by people who have long moved on, and few of us are paying attention to every possible thing on Wikipedia. Twenty years of history deleted in a week. That's wrong. This feels like the actions of a newly promoted editor, inexperienced, and eager to start "cleaning up" Wikipedia, which it is damaging. It also feels like the actions of an editor who, when editing another article, saw that the thing they were adding didn't point to what they expected on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White_Camel_award&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White_Camel_award... # instead of adding a page to disambiguate, they decided to go on a crusade to purge articles that had existed for twenty years. And because these were mostly articles that predate Wikipedia's sourcing policies, they knew it was likely they would succeed. As I've stated in one of the talk threads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejebay-20251223152100-OwenX-20251223150200 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejeba... # I'm not particularly concerned about the restoration of some of the articles, instead I'm more concerned about the blunt application of policies that means important reference, history, and culture are being deleted.
    - Telaneo 9mo ago
      > Why didn't they just do that in the first place? Because they didn't find any. If secondary sources don't seem to exist, then there's no hope to begin with. Someone else found them, and that instantly made it clear that it's fixable. > they did some cursory Googling, then suggested it for deletion - with a deadline of 7 days: I fail to see the problem here, unless you have a problem with only getting 7 days. That's policy as far as I know,[1] and it would be nice to at least get two weeks, but I can't blame the individual proposer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Proposed_deletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Prop... Chesterton's fence goes both ways. Wikipedia policies are there for non-obvious reasons in some cases. > You can't inform users who would be able to contribute off-Wikipedia: Canvassing is one thing. Productively finding sources for an article is another. Wikipedia has had many a talk page drown in off-wiki people come in and make an account to prevent some thing from happening, none of them understanding why the thing is happening, none of them understanding Wikipedia policy, and none of them caring. Inviting these people to discussions is not productive and just a bad time for everyone. If you invite one or two people to actually improve the article, so it can survive on it's own merit, I can't imagine anyone having a problem with that. The equivalent on-wiki thing of just pinging relevant editors is common and encouraged. > This feels like the actions of a newly promoted editor, inexperienced, and eager to start "cleaning up" Wikipedia, The user in question has no special user rights (they were automatically updated to an extended confirmed user over a year ago), and has a few decently long articles under their belt. > It also feels like the actions of an editor who, when editing another article, saw that the thing they were adding didn't point to what they expected on Wikipedia: > instead of adding a page to disambiguate, they decided to go on a crusade to purge articles that had existed for twenty years. And because these were mostly articles that predate Wikipedia's sourcing policies, they knew it was likely they would succeed. This is a rather unfavourable view of the situation, and not really one made in good faith. I can agree that that article shouldn't have just been turned into a redirect, but that redirect was made by a different user to the one who's been nominating articles for deletion, and I can't see any obvious connection. Articles being older than the sourcing requirements also do not exclude them from those requirements. They usually get a break because of that, but it's been well over 10 years by this point. > As I've stated in one of the talk threads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejeba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Left_guide#c-Leejeba... # I'm not particularly concerned about the restoration of some of the articles, instead I'm more concerned about the blunt application of policies that means important reference, history, and culture are being deleted. Owen who responded to your post makes a good point. I'd argue that if Wikipedia deleting an article about something amounts to the deletion or destruction of history, reference or culture, then thing in question probably has some notability problems. Wikipedia makes it easier to find information about a particular topic, but can't be the only reasonable source of things. There has to at least have been reliable sources for the article to have been based on, even if they aren't easily available at this point.
dpark 9mo ago
Deleted pages are no longer accessible, meaning the history of changes is gone. “Memory wipe” seems reasonable.
- Telaneo 9mo ago
  The changelog is still there on the servers and can be accessed by the Wikipedia administrators. The page can also be restored with it's full changelog, although I don't think that's done very often.
  - smonff 9mo ago
    I makes very hard to re-start a new article. Why start from scratch when we could re-use and improve the old article? This is discouraging. I am moderately tech-savvy and had a WikiPedia account for years. But going into the deletion-review process WikiPedia bureaucracy is a lot of work. Pretty honestly I looked at the process and it looks so complicated that I think I would rather write a brand new article.
    - Telaneo 9mo ago
      Articles are usually deleted for good reasons, so it's usually discouraged to do this for those same reasons. If it's just due to notability, you could probably ask an admin to give you a hand and give you the text of the old revision in the draft space, although I've never seen it done. It's usually a better bet to start of a blank slate, since that doesn't carry with it the smell of a previously deleted article, even if that deletion might not have been made with good reason. > But going into the deletion-review process WikiPedia bureaucracy is a lot of work. Pretty honestly I looked at the process and it looks so complicated that I think I would rather write a brand new article. The new article part of that is probably somewhat intended behaviour. The deletion-review process isn't as bad as it seems from all the pages. They're just very verbose just to have everything documented. People are usually nice enough to point in the right direction if something is amiss. They just want things done correctly and will guide the process thusly.

pella 9mo ago

The new rule of notability: if it’s no longer in Google’s index, it basically doesn't meet Wikipedia's notability criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion... "From a Google search, I wasn’t able to find" appears multiple times on that page alone.

jorams 9mo ago
The relevant part is before that: > This article is exclusively sourced on primary sources. The Google search is the nominator looking for an alternative source that could make it notable, something earlier editors failed to establish.
snvzz 9mo ago
In short, Google decides what stays in Wikipedia. Neat. Not.
- orwin 9mo ago
  Not really,if that thing is cited on notable papers or books, it stays too.
  - snvzz 9mo ago
    Except if Google decides otherwise. And then Wikipedia follows suit.
    - literalAardvark 9mo ago
      No. The Google search wouldn't even have happened had the article had sources listed for the claim.
      - snvzz 9mo ago
        Thus Google gets the final word on whether an article is deleted.

cedilla 9mo ago

I'll never understand the amount of vitriol Wikipedia volunteers must receive. Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others? I find this kind of behaviour and rethoric wholly unacceptable.

pella 9mo ago
Consider the other perspective: how should Perl programmers feel when Google's index becomes the main criterion for what is considered important or not? This creates a circular dependency that can erase genuine technical contributions from the historical record.
- smonff 9mo ago
  Google index is tailored for each individual. Persons with interest in breeding cats won’t be served Perl results. If Google index becomes a criterion of notability, we are in a deep deep shit.
leejo 9mo ago
> Why is the deletion (or even deletion proposal) regarded as such a heinous act that people feel the need to attack and bully others? FWIW I don't see this as an attack (with, perhaps, the exception of a couple of comments in the linked thread) and posted the link to the reddit thread as I see it more as an interesting observation around the myriad issues facing "legacy" languages and communities. To wit: * Google appears to be canon for finding secondary sources, according to the various arguments in the deletion proposals, yet we're all aware of how abysmal Google's search has been for a while now. * What's the future of this policy given the fractured nature of the web these days, walled gardens, and now LLMs? * An article's history appears to be irrelevant in the deletion discussion: the CPAN page (now kept) had 24 years of history on Wikipedia, with dozens of sources, yet was nominated for deletion. * Link rot is pervasive, we all knew this, but just how much of Wikipedia is being held up by the waybackmachine? * Doesn't this become a negative feedback cycle? Few sources exist, therefore we remove sources, therefore fewer sources exist.

DrScientist 9mo ago

Wikipedia has a page for an Egyptian King that ruled for perhaps only 10 years 5000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anedjib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anedjib Why is that still relevant? Or to put it another way when does the contemporary move into interesting history?

pwdisswordfishy 9mo ago
The deletion proposals do not mention "interesting" anywhere.
- TZubiri 9mo ago
  Correct, the cited factor is lack of significant coverage.
EdwardDiego 9mo ago
When did the Perl Monks run a kingdom? Apples and oranges.
- skylurk 9mo ago
  Or more importantly, when did the Perl Monks build a pyramid? Plenty of rulers are long forgotten.
  - DrScientist 9mo ago
    A building that wasn't a pyramid, but had simple step sided walls is only significant in retrospect! ie it only became of historic interest after the fact as people retrospectively thought it might have influenced later more significant buildings. While I agree a page about Perl Monks isn't likely to be that significant - I was making a general philosophical point. Eg how do you know that PerlMonks doesn't end up being one of the earliest examples for self-organising elearning - a movement that ends up replacing Universities in the future? In terms of the details of this page leejo posts are more substantive.
- 9mo ago

mrjay42 9mo ago

So this is about PerlMonks, which I knew nothing about until today. I searched it, the site is down The Wikipedia article is deleted This is pure loss of information somehow. I and a lot of other people in the future will never know what "perlmonks" is/are, how important it was?, etc. etc. The logic seems to be: if tomorrow Stack Exchange disappears, the Wikipedia article will be deleted? If yes, then that makes zero sense.

card_zero 9mo ago
That article wouldn't be deleted, because I can find 20 or so references in paper publications saying things like "The Stack Exchange family of websites is a Q&A service for developers and other technical roles. If you’re stuck on a problem, the chances are someone else was too and turned to Stack Exchange for help", or in some cases doing a quick bio of Jeff Atwood or mentioning codinghorror. Hmm, OTOH I can also find multiple paper references to perlmonks, such as "Perlmonks is a web bulletin board dedicated to Perl. It’s not specifically a help desk, but if you’ve done your homework and ask a good question, you’re likely to get top-notch help very quickly" - that's from the O'Reilly Perl book. Sometimes I'm overoptimistic about these things, because I want to keep every obscure article. Well, Perlmonks is still mentioned on the articles for Perl, Outline of the Perl programming language, Perl language structure, and Perl Foundation. (This is because deletionists are lazy and don't actually like doing a thorough job.) So I could see Perlmonks becoming a redirect to one of those pages, which could describe it in a section. Similarly, if Stack Exchange faded into obscurity, it might be rolled into a section of Jeff Atwood's page (or vice versa).

pella 9mo ago

perlmonks HN https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=perlmonks.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=perlmonks.org HN-Search: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=perlmonks https://hn.algolia.com/?query=perlmonks

csvance 9mo ago

The PerlMonks page was in death as it was in life: completely unreadable.

smonff 9mo ago
Still active and relevant for some people from those communities, though. Without mentioning the historic value.

pella 9mo ago

"Self-Organizing Social Learning Through the Monastery Gates" ( Rose M. Baker & David L. Passmore : The Pennsylvania State University ; 2005 ) "Abstract An example of an emergent, self-organizing on-line social learning system is available at the PerlMonks site at http://perlmonks.org/ http://perlmonks.org/. Perl is a scripting language commonly used to as an interface between databases and web pages. Provided in this paper is a review of principles of emergent, self-organizing systems from a perspective of learning systems as well as case study of PerlMonks as self-organizing eLearning." PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rose-Baker/publication/268016670_Self-Organizing_Social_Learning_Through_the_Monastery_Gates/links/554cdc6f0cf21ed2135e5a8f/Self-Organizing-Social-Learning-Through-the-Monastery-Gates.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rose-Baker/publication/... via google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22perlmonks.org%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22perlmonks.org%22