The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: keep. (non-admin closure) Asmodea Oaktree (talk) 11:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)​

"Wikipedia 1.0" is a never realized plan to curate and publish a printed or offline (DVD) version of Wikipedia. This has never happened nor, apparently, ever will. The project went on hiatus some time around 2010, and now it's overdue time to mark it historical, along with all subpages (I am not proposing deletion).
I do not foresee much controversy for marking this historical, but I would like to obtain a formal consensus before proceeding in cleanup: there is a maze of artefact pages related with a "printed encyclopedia", but I plan to address those at a second stage. This nomination only concerns Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team and its numerous subpages, as well as Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0. However, feel free to add any related pages that I missed. Actually, there is maintenance Category:Wikipedia release version work, but a good deal of those pages have already been marked defunct or historical. No such user (talk) 08:26, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

• Mark it historical per nom. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:13, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Speedy keep, no rational to delete anything. Returning to my better judgement, that MfD is a very poor forum, being binary and one week, for complicated things. Being binary, it is not conducive to the discussion needed. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:49, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe: so can you propose a better one? We've marked historical many similar moribund pages and wikiprojects via MfD (although the proposals typically started with "delete"). Just from reading the page and checking its history, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team surely looked like yet another one. I chose MfD exactly because it's a relatively visible venue and has a structure and mandate to bring consensus decisions.
While the page will almost certainly get kept, at least the MfD got a wide attention and has raised awareness that the subpages are a complete mess, and that the whole assessment system might use an overhaul (comments by CMD and Liz are particularly apt). Oh, and re: Returning to my better judgement hindsight – fixed that for you. No such user (talk) 09:20, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

I suggest a talk page RfC.

MfD appears to have the advantage of drawing in a lot of participation, but I think it does this by the shock of fear of deletion.

Many of the MfD outcomes of “archive” or “redirect” could have been done at the outset. SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

There are indeed many valuable comments below. I hope good use is made of them. I am withdrawing my !vote because there is too much that I had not known when making my initial !vote. SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:31, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

The right attitude, on Wikipedia like anywhere else, would have been first to make your point directly to me, user:walkerma or user:audiodude... or even by leaving a message on the WP1 talk page. AFAIK this has not been done and therefore I find your approach a bit off-hand. That said, we should indeed do the best of it, and we have started to revamp the project pages. I hope as well we can soon handle the bug Liz reported here and in many places, this is indeed annoying. Kelson (talk) 12:10, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Kelson: and how was I supposed to know that?! Judging from the talk page history and contents, this is an abandoned place with occasional visitors talking to tumbleweed. I even knew there is a bot out there that gathers some assessment statistics, but how was I (or any other outsider) supposed to connect it with the Wikipedia 1.0 project except by deep-diving into (some of thousands of) subpages? Even a RfC seemed pointless since the talk page looked abandoned. This is obviously going to be kept, but I don't want to withdraw the nom at this point; I grant that it's really being used, but it was in a dire need of cleanup. No such user (talk) 12:31, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

• Mark it historical per nom. Senator2029 【talk】 12:46, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Mark Historical - I didn't know that Mark Historical could be requested by a filer here, although I have seen a lot of stuff marked historical as an Alternative To Deletion. In this case, I agree. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

  As a rule, I complain about non-deletion nomination in this deletion-only forum, but there's something special about this. I have very vague memories about a desire to kill forests and make a paper version as good as Britannica! This could have been a talk page discussion advertised at the village pump. This marks a turning point, no one dreams anymore of a keep-at-home physical Wikipedia. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

  People do still dream of and need an offline keep-at-home Wikipedia. Print prototypes have been produced in at least English, German, and Dutch, physical encyclopedias continue to be printed in dozens of languages, and plenty of single-topic subsets continue to be printed on demand as single volumes. But electronic snapshots for offline use works remain more popular, and have been the format that has actually been produced and distributed millions of times. – SJ + 05:16, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - It appears that the Editorial Team page is subject to vandalism by IPs. That is not a reason for or against any other action. However, maybe it should be semi-protected to maintain it in its historical state. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:18, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
• Keep. It's good that this has been opened, because I've wondered where the 1.0 editorial team presently stands. This page is like a WikiProject page in that it shows active members and a clear agenda. I'm not sure that agenda has changed, what the active members might say about it, and its present connections with Wikimedia's MetaWiki. Also, I did read about one or more CD versions that have been published. So I'd like to find out where this all stands, and this MfD process might help bring it to light. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 07:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

  It's getting hard to find a working CD-reader. SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  Wrote a little on this at WP:Printability. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 13:10, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  I saw that one, but, honestly, could not make heads and tails of it. As I hinted in the nomination, my real beef is with {{R printworthy}} and {{R unprintworthy}}, which clutter redirect pages, and I plan to propose them for deletion if this MfD succeeds. No such user (talk) 13:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  If you couldn't make heads nor tails of it, that's on me for maybe not having written it better. No worries though. As far as the two printability rcat templates go, all good things must come to an end. I've been tagging redirects with them for about 12 years now. Sorry you think they're just clutter, because I was told long ago that they were helpful to the 1.0 team to determine which redirects would be used in the partial versions on the old CDs and DVDs. I think before we go historifyin' stuff, we should make sure that things are not still in motion for two reasons... 1) this is a pet project of Jimbo's, and 2) because of things cited in Kusma's argument below. Really sorry you didn't get my essay! P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 16:29, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  I find it difficult to imagine a place where clutter (if it is clutter) is less harmful than on the description page of a redirect (which only people who really, really want to will ever see). Not convinced that de-cluttering these pages is worth cluttering their edit history. —Kusma (talk) 13:09, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  Nsu's just giving away how much he LOVES redirects and how he wants to keep them uncluttered and pristine. An' he ain't the only mo fo who thinks so. It's just that one man's clutter is another man's Ali Baba cave of gold. Open sesame seed! P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 08:07, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  FTR: WP10 bot is down hard. MediaWiki API deprecation. https://github.com/openzim/wp1/issues/442 —¿philoserf? (talk) 13:15, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Mark historical Per nomination and also because given the growth of Wikipedia and the changes of the World Wide Web - which is now far more widely accessible - the whole idea of an offline Wikipedia seems much less important to me. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:17, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  I am not persuaded otherwise by the claims below; the links Kelso presents are all about a GitHub page, they do not indicate that the project (as opposed to the now multi-purpose bot) is still active let alone that it is a major one. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:53, 15 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Mark historical as obsolete; there are genuine uses for "limited offline Wikipedia selections" like the internet-in-a-box distributions of medical articles to remote areas, but those are each curated for a specific purpose. I strongly hope that this in turn leads to a reassessment of the pointless "article assessment" scales, which were introduced for the purpose of deciding which articles were important enough and of an adequate quality to be included on the CD, and which nowadays serve no useful purpose to readers and just distract editors who complain about their work being regraded from one arbitrary classification to another. ‑ Iridescent 15:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  I'm inclined to disagree with that point, as I and others use article importance assessment to find articles to work on. "High importance" articles that are stubs/start usually have lots of potential sources and there are lots of ways to work on them. I also use article assessment while reading (I've set it up so it displays the grade on the article) to understand how much I can trust an article. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 01:52, 21 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Keep / rename / reuse, these pages are essentially the instruction manual for User:WP 1.0 bot. The name "WP 1.0" has been historical for a long time, but the WikiProject assessments are still going on, and this is the central page for the assessment bot and associated projects. The other question is whether WikiProject assessments are a particularly valuable use of our time, but that shouldn't be decided at MFD. —Kusma (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  But Wikipedia:Pushing to 1.0 should definitely be marked historical, it does not have any strong connection to the ongoing assessment project, only to the abandoned ideas of CD versions. —Kusma (talk) 16:09, 13 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  Pinging @Kelson @Audiodude, the bot operators of WP 1.0 bot so they can comment on which parts are not actually connected to CD and book editions. —Kusma (talk) 13:05, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  Snapshots, now on SD rather than CD, have continued steadily over the past decade, and are more widely distributed and used now than ever. Mainly via Kiwix snapshots, produced by scripts that draw on these pages + assessments. More sporadic print editions have also been made, generally as art rather than practical projects. – SJ + 04:20, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Mark it historical per nom. Johnbod (talk) 16:07, 13 October 2021 (UTC) Not so sure now - neutral. Johnbod (talk) 15:21, 15 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Mark historical, project is dead and buried. As mentioned above, the {{R printworthy}} and associated templates should be proposed for deletion, and warnings such as that on Template:R from diacritic/doc to consult the project should be removed. Stifle (talk) 12:58, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Components created for this project are live and depended upon by the editorial community, for example the WP10 bot that is down at the moment due to a deadline in a deprecated API in MediaWiki. Some provision should be made to articulate components built for WP10 that are not historic. —¿philoserf? (talk) 13:12, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Keep Wikipedia 1.0 is a realised and ongoing active project. The openZIM/Kiwix maintains and further develops the WP1 bot which gather Wikiproject assessments. We have softwares to compute agnostic and topic based selections that we publish each month. These selections are used in thousands of offline versions of Wikipedia which are distributed and updated freely as well... and this since 15 years. The project is strongly sponsored by the WMF and has an audience of around 4-5 millions people a year. I have forgotten to mention that the people working on WP1 have been mostly the same since 15 years and are well known. Kelson (talk) 13:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep This project is still very active! There was a BBC podcast talking about the work of this project not too long ago! It's just that the offline release work is done offline, and it's quite decentralized with a lot of work is done in the field. We still need a reference page on Wikipedia to go to. The releases are now coordinated via download at Kiwix (and supported for many years by the Wikimedia Foundation) rather than via DVD - some new downloads just came out this month. The WP1 releases are also distributed through non-profits such as Internet in a Box. It's true that the page needs a huge update to reflect that - if someone is willing to help out with that, I'd appreciate the assistance. The in-wiki activity is involved mainly in maintaining the assessment process, something used on over 5 million pages on this wiki. If you delete this page, you create 5 million dead links! Hundreds of lines of code have been written in the last two years to update the WP1 Bot and the WP1 tools which had to be moved from the toolserver. It seems silly to delete the home page of the project that coordinates all assessment on this project, and maintains the bot for doing that! Walkerma (talk) 15:38, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep. The WP 1.0 Bot is an important tool for WikiProject management that I use on a daily basis. When it is down, as it has been for the past week or so, its absence is felt. See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index, where (above the proposal that this project and all subpages be marked historical), there is an active discussion about the outage and how to address it. Many thanks to Kelson and Audiodude for their work on it.--Trystan (talk) 18:19, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Mark it historical. The problem is that WP 1.0 bot is poorly named, and does a lot of things that have nothing to do with WP 1.0. A more accurate name for the bot would be "WikiProject Assessment bot". Much of that incorrectly-associated stuff is useful, and should be moved under Wikipedia:Content assessment instead of being marked historical, but the original idea of a "Version 1.0 Editorial team" seems to have clearly died. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:49, 14 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep The project is still very much active, but it's a tech thing so I can understand how it does not fit with some people's view of how things are running. Surprise, surprise: there is often more to things than the eye can see. The other Kiwix guy (talk) 10:31, 15 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep The project is still very much active for the reasons mentioned by Kelson. It sure appears poorly named now but that's because it's a 15+ years project that has evolved. rɛg (talk) 10:40, 15 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep - It's active, as demonstrated above (for example), so no need for any action. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 10:55, 15 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Comment I don't know what to do with this project but the bot that is utilized by Wikipedia 1.0 is a complete pain in my side and other editors. It continues to issues reports for defunct WikiProject, creating assessment pages for projects that have assessed no articles, causing us to delete pages and remove red link categories over and over again ad nauseum but the bot keeps recreating them. I have complained to Wikipedia 1.0 folks months ago but the problem continues. There should be a way to get this 1.0 bot to stop updating pages. If the only way to turn off the irritating 1.0 bot is to make this project "Historical", then that is my vote. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:55, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply
  • Do those pages cause problems outside of being useless? If not, that there are useless pages created that nobody will ever see apart from those doing maintenance work, and which nobody is obliged to clean up, doesn't strike me as a good reason to throw out the whole thing. Obviously that's really annoying (both that the bot is doing that, and that nobody is fixing it), but not a good reason here IMO. A kludge may be to just set up a whole lot of page-level blocks for the bot? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply
    • Well, they give a misleading impression that it is somehow necessary to rate articles by importance (which is a lot of work) and I wouldn't be surprised if there were many people who felt insulted at having their work rated as "low importance" - at least one of them said so at User talk:Iridescent a while ago. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:44, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply
      • Wait, is the implication here that the entire assessment functionality would be deprecated if this is marked as historical? We mark things by importance in a whole lot of active wikiprojects, too. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:06, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply
        • I don't think that marking this page as historical would automatically result in deprecating the assessment thing, no although I suspect it would make it easier to deprecate it or change it, such as making it an opt-in thing that WikiProjects can pursue if they want. But I was only answering the question whether the importance assessment thing causes problems beyond the uselessness point; and I suspect that a lot of WikiProjects wouldn't miss the importance ratings, and the 1.0 thing does kind of create the implication that everybody has to importance-rate stuff. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:15, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply

          I think we could easily lose the importance assessment and replace it where needed with a "core topic=yes" switch. I am not aware of any use for the distinction between Low and Mid importance. —Kusma (talk) 12:28, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply

          Being able to identify 100 or so articles of core relevance to a WikiProject's focus and generate reports based on article quality would be very useful. I agree that there is no real purpose to importance rating beyond that.--Trystan (talk) 17:21, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  and what one editor finds useless another is glad to find. —¿philoserf? (talk) 03:13, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Keep We should follow the wishes of the core of interested editors who have !voted keep. If only every <sarcasm>active</sarcasm> WikiProject had as many interested editors. UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:09, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Comments. (1) We might as well finish this discussion since so many people have commented already, but as far as I'm aware, I believe suggesting that a page be marked historical (but not deleted) can be done on the relevant page's talkpage and doesn't require MfD. (2) In agreement with some of the comments above, a few months after I first contributed to Wikipedia, my first article was (accurately) tagged "start class and low importance." If I'd seen that the day after my first contribution, it wouldn't have helped incentivize me to make a second one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:25, 16 October 2021 (UTC)reply

  Perhaps we can find a kinder phrasing than "low importance", or have those templates collapsed by default; but 'centrality/importance in a field' provides a useful gloss and rough sort-order. – SJ + 04:20, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Mark historical per nom. The time has passed, people. Aza24 (talk) 06:53, 17 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep as Wikipedia 1.0 WikiProject is fundamental to the purpose of Wikipedia itself. That is Wikipedia is an encyclopedia! Otherwise, what have we all been wasting our time doing for the past 20-odd years? This WikiProject sets the goal or vision for Wikipedia; produce an encyclopedia that can be used anywhere by anyone. So being able to produce a printed version or an off-line version is the first step to a minimum viable product. Perhaps the reason this project seems inactive and people consider it to be historic is because Wikipedia is nowhere close to what this WikiProject is trying to achieve and its goal is still very far in the future at the current rate of development. The associated bot is fundamental to the assessment system associated with all the current WikiProjects, so it is NOT historic either. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 07:26, 17 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Mark as historical the Pushing to 1.0 page, leaning mark as historical but less certain on the Version 1.0 Editorial Team. There are a few interesting points on related issues above, such as article assessment and the 1.0 bot. If one was to take the Version 1.0 Editorial Team page as a Wikiproject page, then it would be an easy keep as there appears to be active work done via it. However, in this situation it is not presented as a Wikiproject page, but as a general Wikipedia page, and as a Wikipedia process I would agree the idea does no longer matches with the overall community goals. Considering it has been raised above that the page is severely out of date, it does not apparently reflect the 'Wikiproject' either. If it needs such a significant update, a new page may as well be created, and this may be better than updating as there is merit to keeping a historical page around to see how things once were. (The Pushing to 1.0 page holds no similar Wikiproject-style merit, and so that is an easier decision.)
  Regarding article assessment, marking these as historical would not change Wikipedia:Content assessment, which is effectively separately maintained by individual Wikiprojects along with the GA and FA/FL processes. Similarly, I think the bot has expanded a bit beyond 1.0 as mentioned above, and could continue, although it may need better explanatory pages. CMD (talk) 07:30, 17 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep / rename / reuse. This effort is absolutely fundamental to Wikipedia becoming relevant outside of its Eurocentric "Britannica 2.0" base. So that Wikipedia (eventually, it will take time!) becomes genuinely and legitimately relevant to people of all ages outside of "Western" countries — becoming much, much, much more than (essentially) a "Britannica 3.0" White-Man's-Echo-Chamber-with-a-few-honorary-guests. This means extremely hard work, that is thankfully happening today, precisely as a result of the Wikipedia 1.0 project. And it will take another decade (at least) to bear fruit. And it will only be possible if Wikipedia itself begins to wake up, taking seriously and taking to heart the importance of projects just exactly like "Wikipedia 1.0". This will happen when Wikipedians choose to look ahead over the next 100 years to their legacy, to our legacy, to everyone's legacy. And choose to dedicate ourselves and genuinely involve ourselves in the local cultural fabric of developing nations. (As an aside, the "Wikipedia 1.0" project could certainly use a rebranding, as its name remains extremely confusing to almost everyone, but until that happens it remains "Wikipedia 1.0" for now. Possibly there are others here who can step forward artistically, with ideas??) User:Unleashkids 20:32, 17 October 2021 (UTC)reply

• Keep, still active I recorded an update on this in 2017 - see the video. This documentation remains relevant and alive. Wikipedia 1.0 is the origin of WikiProjects, which is still fundamental to the Wikimedia experience. The artificial intelligence tool meta:ORES both uses and creates article ratings, and may not have been developed had it not been for this project setting so many precedents. We are not packaging Wikipedia on CDs anymore, but we sure distribute it through contemporary storage formats including with meta:Kiwix and the meta:Wiki Project Med/App. At Wikipedia:Database download it is routine for researchers to using the sorting scheme from Wikipedia 1.0 to find what they want. Ask the Wikimedia Foundation to sponsor Wikimedia community organization and documentation, especially in lower and middle income countries and underrepresented demographics. This page is detailed and documented to the extent that is normal among wiki community volunteers, but to keep up with increased community requests for updates and documentation, we need to get the Wikimedia Foundation to practice financial diversity to get features like this one to include the perspectives and use cases of communities which are underrepresented. This tool is more key to managing English Wikipedia content in non-English languages, and because so many users of this are not English speaking, documentation here does not include those global perspectives which could be here if there were funding and support for small language communities. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Comment: I've spoken with User:Kelson, and we're going to begin updating the main WP1 page to show the status of this project in 2021, and we hope to get others to share their part of the WP1 work on here too. Walkerma (talk) 22:40, 17 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Speedy Keep. A curious way to go about discussing a rename or 'historical' tag the latter would not, it seems, be accurate here. It is worth cleaning up the maintenance category, and linking to the current constellation of Kiwix + IIAB + WOW work from here. Glad to see that many of the active maintainers and developers have already been pinged. – SJ + 04:20, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Speedy keep this project, and under the same name, which is the one it is known and largely referenced under. Otherwise, similar arguments to many above listed. Anthere (talk) 08:35, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep. I use this project on a monthly basis. It is far from inactive. As User:Bluerasberry says the page could use some TLC. Tim Moody (talk) 14:00, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep, a procedural keep if nothing else. The article-assessment aspect of this is still very much active. It is seemingly unclear what marking WP 1.0 as historical would do in that respect, so MfD is the wrong venue for this. (Granted, given the above, a discussion at another venue would likely result in no consensus anyway.) Beyond that, I see no benefit to marking it as historical. This page is the basis for article assessment and it appears from some of the above comments that the 1.0 project itself is still ongoing. --Sable232 (talk) 22:08, 18 October 2021 (UTC)reply
• Keep for the good reasons given by Cameron Dewe above. Wikipedia is subject to attrition, churn and decay and might easily suffer a systemic collapse – this very discussion shows how easily years of work by thousands of editors can be destroyed. The goal of establishing a checkpoint version as a project milestone which can be archived and used as a benchmark is therefore sensible. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:19, 22 October 2021 (UTC)reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.