Forum:Wikililo.org

WikiLilo
WikiLilo is intended to be a wiki where all the lost and deleted wikipedia articles can go. I know many [wikipedia] users are increasingly frustrated with the somewhat contraversial removal policies (notability being an example). Wikipedia creators sometimes spend hours creating a page that is later deemed un-notable.

Several years ago, I (MR.R) really took a liking to wikipedia because I could find information on certain less popular items that I could find very little information on in more traditional sources. While I understand, and concede, that not every piece of information is worth having in wikipedia, I think a lot of deleted stubs and less-notable articles could be useful to others. That caused me to think about WikiLilo. I was told that "Lilo" means "temporarily lost" in Hawaiian, so I registered the domains WikiLilo.com,.net,.org.

Possible Slogans and Logos

 * WikiLilo - The Lost Pieces
 * Possible Logo: The missing pieces from the top of the Wikipedia ball.
 * WikiLilo - Where Lost Articles are Found

Discussions
Before requesting a new Wiki for this, I wanted to try to get a consensus as to whether others think this could be useful. I can envision getting additional support by asking Wikipedian Admins to be kind enough to add a WikiLilo comment to their removal notices ie. "This article does not appear to be notable according to the Wikipedia guidelines. Perhaps this article should be moved to the WikiLilo."

Arguments Pro WikiLilo
I think it's a great idea! There is a search on Foodtvnetwork.com that will only hold a recipe for a certain amount of time and then it's gone! I just hate that! It's always the one I need! (10:05, 27 January 2007 68.100.132.235)

This is wonderful! Admins at Wikipedia should not be able to decide what is "noteworthy" for the rest of us. ALL information should be available, not just what is deemed "noteworthy". 71.163.54.160 23:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Having read Angela's "Con"[tra] comment below, I still support the idea. Angela's suggestion of directing where material might go has the flaw that the Wikipedia deleters may not care where it goes and would be unwilling to try to find out, whereas we can make it easy for them to put the stuff in one place and let the Wikia community decide where (if anywhere) it goes from there. Make it searchable along with the other "Search all Wikia" process. We can have a "last chance" system whereby anything not adopted within a given time (say 6 months?) is listed as ripe for deletion... Robin Patterson 01:04, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

If you don't make it a dumping ground but a midway station as Patterson is suggesting, it seems like a good idea. Of course only for the articles deleted couse of their notability, not for all the crap. If it doesn't take off and gets filled with spam and vandalism, can't it just be shut down then?--Rataube 14:00, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Patterson is on to a good idea here -- Let users decide where stuff should go & make it all searchable. As for the "last chance system", that sounds great too, as it would avoid cases when stuff is just summarily deleted from Wikipedia. I think with this solution administrations can still remove items quickly from Wikipedia, but then Authors should be given perhaps 6 months or a year to gather support. During this "last chance period", stuff could get posted on Wikililo. Wikililo seems to fill a void & be a middle-ground. Wikipedia contains more general info but things get deleted quickly & Wikililo would contain stuff that Wikipedia thinks is "not notable" or unworthy in some other respect. 134.113.7.99 15:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * By "last chance", he meant last chance to move it to a relevant wikia, not last chance to return to wikipedia.--Rataube 16:44, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Arguments Con WikiLilo
Great Idea but Needs a Tighter Focus & Bigger Goal

by Kevin A. McGrail

I'm a big fan of WikiPedia and use it at least a few times weekly. But my strongest argument against WikiLilo, as it stands, is simply that it is too broad a brush for the problem at hand. Put simply, the energy and purpose of this Wiki is to argue the notability issue of a biography on WikiPedia not necessarily to deal with EVERY deletion issue WikiPedia has. I imagine those issues are quite overwhelming.

By tightening the goal to maintain only articles removed for notability issues seems to me to be more feasible and (potentially) a more fruitful goal. First, it would serve as a resevoir for deleted articles and second, it would serve as a defacto protest for WikiPedia to change their non-notable policy.

Ideally, the site should also really be a formal policy changing campaign with links to the original articles on WikiPedia to allow for constant growth, editing and additions to the original articles to meet the policy?

However, because the key point behind this project is an article tagged for deletion for lack of notability. Contention aside, I felt the article should meet Wikipedia's guidelines under the criteria of 'Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events, such as by being assassinated.' It also had coverage in world-renowed newspapers (The Washington Post), US national news (FoxNews), international news (BBC) as well as multi-state US regional news (WTOP, NBC4 & Washington Times). Put simply, the article that led to this site should not have been marked for deletion.

WikiPedia acknowledges that this is a contentious issue and there really ISN'T a policy. Only a guideline for notability exists (See and ).

If WikiLilo is necessary to achieve a fix for WikiPedia, sobeit. But I like to think it may be solved by getting more involved in the notability guidelines. We can help change those guidelines here:

In conclusion, does WikiPedia have a systemic problem or do the articles need better editing to adhere to the notability guidelines? If there is a systemic problem, let's fix the guideline at the source. If an article has a gray-area problem, let's put some manpower and links together to bear on fixing the articles. (02:50, 29 January 2007 68.100.132.235)

Comments
I think this is too broad. Deleted Wikipedia articles can already be saved on Wikia, but it's best if they go to a wiki on a specific subject so they have a community to look after them. For example, if a Wikipedia article on a website is listed for deletion, it can be copied to the Internet Wikia, if an article on a Muppet episode was deleted, perhaps the Muppet Wikia community would choose to rescue it for their site. A general site for everything deleted isn't likely to be well enough maintained to prevent it being full of only junk (and most of what Wikipedia deletes is junk. :) Angela talk

Great feedback Angela. Not sure if I concur with everything (but then again I proposed it). First, the very article on adding new wikis states to be "as broad as possible," which tends to contradict the broad statement above. I'm certainly against vandalism, but my biggest concern is with notability. I (among many others) find that it is a very subjective term. What if we limited the scope of WikiLilo to be a place for only articles that were removed due to being non-notable? MR.R talk