Odin, Wikipedia and engagement farming

willdr

Interesting article (I tend to agree with you re SNG in the programming field). But unfortunately I couldn't easily absorb the substance as your site needs some work on mobile: - text completely overflowing the background - body text is arguably too small - the masonry grid layout of posts does not work visually - footnotes appearing out of order

dibujaron

This article makes Odin sound extremely well-known. I've never heard of it before, and I feel like I keep up with programming topics pretty diligently. Admittedly I don't work at the systems programming layer, but I've definitely heard plenty about Rust and c++ topics. Curious if others feel similarly, or maybe I just happened to miss it?

smitty1e

Well, there's always https://grokipedia.com/page/Odin_programming_language

andai

If I've got this right: programming these days -- especially niche areas -- meshes poorly with Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources and notability, which were designed mostly with traditional media in mind. e.g. a company saying they use a language is not considered a good source because it's a primary source? Not sure if I'm getting that part right. The most interesting part to me: Wikipedia has a bunch of languages that were used by like one person, because there is published material on them, while languages used by thousands of people today get deleted because they fail Wikipedia's specific definition of notability. And they're reluctant to change that because they expect it would lead to a flood of wannabes making articles about their hobby language.

andrybak

> Articles for Deletion votes -- original with comments > > Summarizing it, 5/7 for delete have accounts, and 1/4 for keep have accounts. Not along after the final vote, a Wikipedia admin deleted the article. Being a little bit lax with my language, the majority's consensus agreed that Odin isn't notable, and the article had no reliable sources. important clarification about a popular misconception: "Articles for deletion" discussions on English Wikipedia are not decided by vote. For more details, see - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_sub... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion#Ov...

greyface-

For reference, here's the article's content at the time of deletion: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Odin_(progr...

brooke2k

The great thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can participate. Anyone can advocate for change, such as changing the rules around notability. But if you want to have enough influence to effectively advocate for changing a rule as impactful as the site-wide notability guidelines, then you'd likely want to spend quite a while volunteering, integrating yourself into the community, and learning a lot about how and why the site rules are what they are. I think that's a good thing. It means the people who have the influence to make huge decisions like that are deeply familiar with the website and the community, and therefore deeply familiar with the consequences of those decisions. So I just find it frustrating when people who don't participate in the community whatsoever write inflammatory diatribes on why they think the editing guidelines should be changed because their favorite programming language got marked for deletion. And it's even more frustrating how, when their handful of drive-by tweets fail to immediately enact sweeping change, they and their followers then start a huge flame war, accusing Wikipedia mods of being "cultural marxists" and "shills for the mainstream media" and etc. Anyways, my point is -- if you want to change things, try participating in the community rather than shouting slurs at it from the outside.

bobbytheblkbear

I'll just say the obvious: Wikipedia admins get it wrong more often than they get it right, and the general process for Wikipedia is obtuse, ignorant, and generally backward, with most of the favor given towards "people with old accounts" as opposed to actual knowledge. It's beyond simple to get new editors banned for simply creating edits others don't like , no matter what the veracity is. The only reason it's good for things like science is that it's generally hard for the kind of lowIQ populace their older accounts and admins have to argue about definitive numbers. But I am sure if they could they'd say things like "Hydrogen doesn't actually always have 1 electron", and so on.

bawolff

> If you are familiar with Odin, one of the most popular "C competitor" languages, this might sound a little bit insane to say out loud Its hard to believe someone actually said this with a straight face. I tend to lean more inclusionist, but there is no world where odin is one of the most popular c competitor languages.

qjack

The most dumbfounding thing in all of this is the number of people interacting directly with Jimmy Wales on twitter and having no sense for how wikipedia works or why. It should not be surprising that a company webpage or even the CEO confirming the fact are insufficient sources. If wikipedia did accept this, they would just be a place for people to make self-reported baseless claims. There's already a place for that, and it's the platform they're responding on. Wikipedia has an interesting problem. How do you build a large corpus of generally true information? Their solution is to offload the work of verification to journalists and academics, who are held liable for their statements by the institutions they work within. This is why wikipedia is a tertiary source. Primary sources originate some piece of information, secondary sources investigate and verify those primary sources (verify being "they said that" not "it really happened"), and tertiary sources aggregate trusted secondary sources. All of the people in the twitter thread (excluding Jimmy himself, of course) seem completely unaware in this system, and while I too would be interested in more "modern" approaches, don't seem to have thought about this problem at all. Journalism and academia are both on the back foot these days, and it seems unlikely that we will see a big resurgence in funding for either. Without them, I don't see how wikipedia can continue to outsource the problem of verification.

loeg

> My hypothesis is quite simple: I don't think GingerBill ever cared about Wikipedia's standards for programming. He follows several right-wing figures on Twitter, who have long since made up their mind that Wikipedia has been ideologically captured by activists and "the woke". Oh, well, if a critic fails your ideological purity test, I guess that must mean there can't be any valid criticisms.

JBits

It is disappointing to see that the v programming language has a Wikipedia article given it's history of being essentially fraudulent.

SanjayMehta

The real "engagement farming" is from the Wikipedia editor attempting to delete the article for clout amongst the Wikipedia community. That's all this is about.

staplung

I'm not sure I understand why even a truly obscure programming language article should ever be deleted; it's not like Wikipedia is running low on paper. If Odin ceased all development tomorrow it would be good to have some record of what it was. For the record, I like Odin. (On homebrew it appears to have been downloaded 6,707 in the past year. Compare to:) zig: 71,565 rust: 304,405 golang: 1,246,300 malbogle: 9

daneel_w

Interesting article until you reach the gooey, messy bottom where the author takes a sudden personal turn and decides to pick apart the "spineless" creator of the programming language - who is the article's actual subject - by wielding their own ideologically and morally superior perspectives as truths. Smug, ironic, personal and somewhat unpleasant. I had never heard about the language until today. In my observation, Rust is C's main competitor.

bakugo

This article seems quite drawn out for what is essentially an ad hominem attack on the personal views of the creator of the language.

boca_honey

I know programming is what's most important to many in this community, but as an outsider I need to ask: literally WTF is Odin? I mean I know about Java and C++, etc. But Odin? That's what Wikipedia policies are for. It cannot include anything and everything about every single profession, subculture, or interest group. An anime community would complain that a very influential (but largely unknown and mostly lost) OVA from 1987 should have its own article. A Peruvian community could argue that one of its most celebrated local activists should have his own article. Of course they would, but how could Wikipedia know they are really what they claim if there isn't a standard of what a credible/respectable source is? That being said, Wikipedia editors are just Reddit mods with delusions of grandeur, so anything that brings them down is fine by me. Grokpedia has the right idea... I actually think that's the future. Too bad it's controlled by a grifting manchild.

square_usual

I'm so happy I have something I can link to that clearly and patiently engages with all the people who concern troll about Wikipedia. It genuinely bothers me how the temperature of the conversation about wikipedia (even here on HN) has changed so much because of people who don't know anything, don't care to verify anything, but have an axe to grind.

James_K

I think the better conclusion here is that most programming languages don't deserve Wikipedia articles. You wouldn't want one for every brand of screwdriver or kitchen appliance. Programming languages are likewise, just tools. An article restating the information on Odin's website is a net negative to anyone who reads it, as they'd be better served by visiting the website directly. A bad article should be deleted.

jimbob45

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language) If you feel ambivalent about this, consider the “Influenced By” and “Influenced” sections on the Rust page (or C++ or Java) and decide for yourself if Odin is more or less notable than those languages that have blue links.