New Home for the QBWiki

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 7:53 pm

I'm come to the conclusion that I no longer wish to be the host of the QBWiki. If someone else is willing to host this, please let me know and I can give you a database dump of the current wiki.

Some things to note:
-There are several articles on the wiki that don't have nice things to say about people. At least a few of these articles contain pretty strong and unverified claims. If the new admins keep these articles, they'll be legally responsible for them.
-Even articles about generally liked people in the quizbowl community often contain things that a lot of people don't want showing up on a first-page Google search. Whether the new admins want to keep these or not is up to them, but I'd suggest going through the wiki and removing all non-quizbowl content.
-The wiki currently prohibits people from creating new accounts without getting admin approval. If this policy is continued, someone has to go through the relatively annoying task of manually creating new accounts every few days.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 9:01 pm

I've been waiting for the host transition to come so that I can go through and scrub out all of the irrelevant stuff that Mike alludes to from the site. Potential new hosts can rest assured that the new Wiki (should I be retained as an admin, anyway) will be solely focused on factual, historically important information gathered from public sources or from cited interviews with named people. The excised content may be given over to some other party to host a "QB humor wiki" for which that person would be solely liable.

Nine-Tenths Ideas · Post by **Nine-Tenths Ideas** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:06 pm

Where would things like "Buzzer rock" fall? I mean, it's not factual and not entirely historically important, but it's certainly not libelous of anyone in particular and a somewhat useful bit of the lexicon.

at your pleasure · Post by **at your pleasure** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:13 pm

I guess someone should append a lexicon of some sort to the QB wiki for stuff like that.

jonah · Post by **jonah** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:08 pm

I'm willing to host this.

Skepticism and Animal Feed · Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:23 pm

Aldo Montoya wrote:Where would things like "Buzzer rock" fall? I mean, it's not factual and not entirely historically important, but it's certainly not libelous of anyone in particular and a somewhat useful bit of the lexicon.

You could "document" it by linking to attested usage on the forum. But since the intent here is to avoid libel suites, if it doesn't mention anyone it doesn't seem like anyone could credibly threaten to sue for libel, no?

(Nothing in this post should be taken as legal advice or general legal information)

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Sat Sep 19, 2009 12:33 am

jonah wrote:I'm willing to host this.

Alright Jonah, send me an e-mail ([email protected]) and we'll work out details.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:07 pm

Mike, Jonah, and I have worked out the skeleton for how the new content rules and the transfer are going to work. I would like to ask for general community input on the specifics in this thread.

We have already locked down the current Wiki so that we can accomplish the first goal, which is having a team of admins remove all "potentially libelous, personal, and in-joke content" from the pages before the migration. We need lots of help on this, so if you're interested, post here or send me an e-mail.

The cleaned-up pages will be put on the new Wiki without any way to access their histories. The original author will be listed as "QBWiki" and all former page histories and talk pages will be deleted. Thus, you can associate yourself with the new QBWiki without the risk of being tainted by any questionable content.

The new Wiki will be devoted to historical and linguistic content only, and will eliminate the following things:
1) Gossip about people in quizbowl
2) Neologisms that no one actually uses
3) Claims such as "this tournament plagiarized questions" or "a bunch of teams think this school's events suck" that aren't cited to either one of the public communications fora or an on-record interview with a named person
4) Pseudonymous editing. All editors will be required to use a single account with the username being your actual first and last name.

Note that this does not mean that a Wikipedia-like regime of "citation needed" and all the crap that comes with that is going to be put in place. You are free to put in your personal knowledge that "the Harvard team was founded in 1991" or "the 2005 Michigan MLK used power tossups" or anything along those lines. It's only accusations of unethical behavior and the like that need citations. Pages such as "common arguments against the quality of the NAC" will still exist, but will have to uphold some standard of sourcing.

If people have objections to any of these plans, this thread is the place to talk about them. Remember to contact me if you want to help clean up the current pages.

Stained Diviner · Post by **Stained Diviner** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:49 pm

I want to thank Mike, Jonah, and Matt for doing this. I would suggest moving or mirroring this thread in a high school forum so that it gets a wider audience.

bsmith · Post by **bsmith** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 3:29 pm

If there's an unreferenced article that's a) Canadian b) historical and c) objectionable, chances are, I got the juicy tidbits from a newspaper article and just forgot to put in the source (1989 Tagwi and 1995 Bell definitely happened).

What kind of restrictions will there be on new signups/posting? I know you want to filter out the people who make slurs about classmates, but what about a random person from, say, Nevada or Maine that has a treasure trove of articles about competition from that region? Will edits be pre-screened? limited to a select few people? under a "probation" period à la these forums?

Post by **Auks Ran Ova** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 3:40 pm

Yeah, I'll help with this.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:39 pm

I think we should expand what we mean by "Gossip about people in quizbowl" a bit more. For instance, the stuff on the Andy Goss page referencing his 9/11 posts isn't really gossip--I believe the article contains links to the actual posts. Despite this fact, I don't think stuff like that belongs on the quizbowl wiki. I'd also like to see stuff like "The Worst Person in Quizbowl", also referenced on Goss' page, removed from the Wiki.

dtaylor4 · Post by **dtaylor4** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:04 pm

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I think we should expand what we mean by "Gossip about people in quizbowl" a bit more. For instance, the stuff on the Andy Goss page referencing his 9/11 posts isn't really gossip--I believe the article contains links to the actual posts. Despite this fact, I don't think stuff like that belongs on the quizbowl wiki. I'd also like to see stuff like "The Worst Person in Quizbowl", also referenced on Goss' page, removed from the Wiki.

Maybe add a requirement that the information included be relevant to the game of quizbowl, and reliable in that it should be rooted in factual information that can be cited.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:48 pm

Almost all of the 2700+ articles on the qbwiki need to be combed through and checked, edited and deleted. Thus, I need help to finish this.

I'd like this all to be done by Sunday.

As a guide, please be very aggressive in your editing. In-jokes and non-quizbowl content should be erased. The old version of the wiki will be kept online for a few weeks after the transfer in case someone wants to add this stuff back in (pending moderator approval).

Please post your qbwiki name here and I'll give you permission to edit these files and which letter(s) you want to sign up for to edit. For instance, if you picked "A", you'd be gonig through all of the You can search through all of the pages at: http://doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php?tit ... amespace=0

Here is the current list of people who have signed up:
1985-1990: ikillkenny
1991-1993: ikillkenny
1994-1996: ikillkenny
1996-1998: ikillkenny
1999-2001: ikillkenny
2002-2004: ikillkenny
2005-2009: ikillkenny
A: ikillkenny
B: ikillkenny
C: ikillkenny
D: ikillkenny
E: ikillkenny
F: ikillkenny
G: BrendanM
H: BrendanM
I: BrendanM
J: ikillkenny
K: ikillkenny
L: ikillkenny
M: ikillkenny
N: ikillkenny
O: ikillkenny
P: ikillkenny
Q: ikillkenny
R: ikillkenny
S: ikillkenny
T: ikillkenny
U: ikillkenny
V: ikillkenny
W: ikillkenny
X: ikillkenny
Y: ikillkenny
Z: ikillkenny

Charbroil · Post by **Charbroil** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:32 pm

Charbroil; 1985-1996 (the first three sections listed)

I may be able to do more later, but I'll have to see how busy I am this weekend.

Charbroil · Post by **Charbroil** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 3:40 pm

Hey...any chance I might get editorial privileges some time soon?

Also, I'm curious as to what the editing standards are--I don't really understand why it's necessary to remove stuff like the JCV Fiasco from Willie Chen's page or anecdotes about tournaments from the Vincent Massey one, or, for that matter, commentary about the length of my Wiki article from my article. All of that is (presumably) factually true and Quiz Bowl related, without being particularly inappropriate, so why get rid of them? While there isn't a cited source for some of this kind of information, it's not as if many other things on the Wiki have sources either.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:07 pm

Sorry for the delay, you should not have editing access.

In general, my policy has been to strictly excise things that could go either way. For instance, much of the Willie Chen stuff falls in that category. For instance, that JCV stuff doesn't have any sources. I mean, is the following a true statement: "In February 2002, Willie Chen solicited a packet set from a collegiate packet-submission tournament being run at [[George Washington]], that school's long-running JCV Invitational, on the pretext that he would be mirroring it for California collegiate teams."? If you're willing to stand by this, find a source and re-post it to the new site.

The length of your wiki article doesn't have anything to do with anything and is quizbowl in-joke material. Same with anecdotes about tournaments. These are the type of things that don't have direct connections to quizbowl except that quizbowls were doing them. Do we really need to preserve on the Internet that someone fell down the stairs getting an award or something?

Charbroil · Post by **Charbroil** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:54 pm

I can see where you're coming from, especially on things like the falling down the stairs affair, since those things aren't really that important (and obviously I have no idea if the Willie Chen thing is true or not, since that was greatly before my time), but on the other hand some of those "in-jokes" I think are interesting because they reveal something that's reasonably noteworthy about the person/program the article is about--ex. my giant article reflects the fact that I'm long winded. :) Anyway, it's your call--I was just curious.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 10:37 pm

I'd still really appreciate some help with this project.

Nine-Tenths Ideas · Post by **Nine-Tenths Ideas** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 10:40 pm

Sign me up to do, say, three letters of the alphabet.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 11:31 pm

Aldo Montoya wrote:Sign me up to do, say, three letters of the alphabet.

What's your QBWiki username?

Nine-Tenths Ideas · Post by **Nine-Tenths Ideas** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:51 am

Isaac.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:22 am

I've given you rights to edit and assigned you A-C.

Nuclear Densometer Test · Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:42 pm

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I'd still really appreciate some help with this project.

I would love to help.
What do you need done?

cvdwightw · Post by **cvdwightw** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:49 pm

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:In general, my policy has been to strictly excise things that could go either way. For instance, much of the Willie Chen stuff falls in that category. For instance, that JCV stuff doesn't have any sources. I mean, is the following a true statement: "In February 2002, Willie Chen solicited a packet set from a collegiate packet-submission tournament being run at [[George Washington]], that school's long-running JCV Invitational, on the pretext that he would be mirroring it for California collegiate teams."? If you're willing to stand by this, find a source and re-post it to the new site.

source

Here's the major question: How do we go about citing things that do not exist publicly? For instance, I can give a complete list of teams that competed in the JV division of the high school tournament being referred to in that JCV paragraph. Since stats for that tournament were sent out as an Excel file that I doubt anyone still has, I don't know that anyone has the overall statistics of the tournament in either division; therefore, the only source that I know for certain to exist is my notebook of scores from my junior/senior year. This is thus documented evidence, but there is no way to actually cite this unless I somehow scan that notebook into a pdf and make it publicly available.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:56 pm

Dark Ages: Fae wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I'd still really appreciate some help with this project.
I would love to help.
What do you need done?

See messages above. You're going through pages beginning with the assigned letters and deleting things that don't relate to quizbowl, aren't verifiable, etc (see above for more details).

What is your QBWiki username so I can give you permissions?

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:58 pm

cvdwightw wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:In general, my policy has been to strictly excise things that could go either way. For instance, much of the Willie Chen stuff falls in that category. For instance, that JCV stuff doesn't have any sources. I mean, is the following a true statement: "In February 2002, Willie Chen solicited a packet set from a collegiate packet-submission tournament being run at [[George Washington]], that school's long-running JCV Invitational, on the pretext that he would be mirroring it for California collegiate teams."? If you're willing to stand by this, find a source and re-post it to the new site.
source

Here's the major question: How do we go about citing things that do not exist publicly? For instance, I can give a complete list of teams that competed in the JV division of the high school tournament being referred to in that JCV paragraph. Since stats for that tournament were sent out as an Excel file that I doubt anyone still has, I don't know that anyone has the overall statistics of the tournament in either division; therefore, the only source that I know for certain to exist is my notebook of scores from my junior/senior year. This is thus documented evidence, but there is no way to actually cite this unless I somehow scan that notebook into a pdf and make it publicly available.

You can source it by stating that you personally verify this information from the records in your notebook.

Again, the non-edited version of the wiki will be up for a few days after the transfer is complete if you want to add stuff like this back in and have justification for doing so. This seems like a case where it would be valid.

Nuclear Densometer Test · Tue Oct 13, 2009 7:17 am

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:
Dark Ages: Fae wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:I'd still really appreciate some help with this project.
I would love to help.
What do you need done?
See messages above. You're going through pages beginning with the assigned letters and deleting things that don't relate to quizbowl, aren't verifiable, etc (see above for more details).

What is your QBWiki username so I can give you permissions?

Username: Amitpop

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 11:45 am

I have given you permissions and assigned you some letters.

Dan-Don · Post by **Dan-Don** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:04 am

So...what's going on with this??

Charbroil · Post by **Charbroil** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:48 am

People are still editing? I mean, Dan, if you want to sign up...

jonah · Post by **jonah** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 12:55 am

Charbroil wrote:People are still editing

Citation needed. This seems barely true; there have been three edits made in the past two weeks. Do people consider themselves done with their assignments?

Charbroil · Post by **Charbroil** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:36 am

Well, I meant in the sense of that there's more editing to be done.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 11:50 am

I've been working on this on and off, but of course more help would be greatly appreciated.

bmcke · Post by **bmcke** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 2:39 pm

I guess I'll try some letters. Username BrendanM.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:59 pm

bmcke wrote:I guess I'll try some letters. Username BrendanM.

Sorry for the delay. I've assigned you the letters G-I.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:53 am

Almost everything has been assigned.

Can people please finish this by this weekend? I'd like to get this project completed soon. If you can't finish it, let me know.

bmcke · Post by **bmcke** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:21 pm

I just got letters, so I'd been hoping to do it on this weekend. Does midnight Saturday sound like an okay deadline?

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:25 pm

bmcke wrote:I just got letters, so I'd been hoping to do it on this weekend. Does midnight Saturday sound like an okay deadline?

Yeah, this is fine. Let's say Sunday night is the deadline.

marnold · Post by **marnold** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 8:18 pm

I don't get why stuff like "this noted terrible tournament was terrible for these reasons" and "this terrible organization does these terrible things" are being removed. While cutting down on the random junk is something I'm generally in favor of, removing everything "negative" or not strictly related to the gameplay of quizbowl is making this wiki useless and boring.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 8:28 pm

marnold wrote:I don't get why stuff like "this noted terrible tournament was terrible for these reasons" and "this terrible organization does these terrible things" are being removed. While cutting down on the random junk is something I'm generally in favor of, removing everything "negative" or not strictly related to the gameplay of quizbowl is making this wiki useless and boring.

Do you want to cite specific examples?

The purpose of this pruning is to provide a baseline of information from which to build a new wiki, with stricter editorial control and less liable to e-mails the administrator gets every few months saying "remove this article that doesn't cite any information or I'm going to sue you for libel". If you, under your real name, want to add relevant information that got removed to the new wiki, you can attempt to do that. Or you can take some responsibility and host the original wiki on your own web server if you want, as that will be available if this is something you actually care about.

Charbroil · Post by **Charbroil** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 8:42 pm

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:If you, under your real name, want to add relevant information that got removed to the new wiki, you can attempt to do that.

Is there by any chance a way that we could get a copy of the old Wiki from before all of the deletions? I don't think that anyone has time at the moment to go through all of the old articles to see what deleted parts might be worth re-including, but there might be material in there that is worth including that someone might like to look at later.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 8:56 pm

Charbroil wrote:
Bentley Like Beckham wrote:If you, under your real name, want to add relevant information that got removed to the new wiki, you can attempt to do that.
Is there by any chance a way that we could get a copy of the old Wiki from before all of the deletions? I don't think that anyone has time at the moment to go through all of the old articles to see what deleted parts might be worth re-including, but there might be material in there that is worth including that someone might like to look at later.

Yes, this will be available.

Matt Weiner · Post by **Matt Weiner** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:00 pm

My suggestion is that we require a cite, but allow people to cite to "personal recollection" or so forth. That way it's clear who is making what claims and the operator of the site hosting the wiki is not viewed as liable.

marnold · Post by **marnold** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:01 pm

The particular articles I was referencing are the edits to "Harvest Bowl" (which took out the particulars of why the tournament sucked) and "Honda Campus All-Star Challenge" (that took out the particulars of why some of its policies were hateful, one of the primary pieces of evidence of CBI being a terrible organization). Other things randomly culled from the recent changes page: Meredith Johnson was, in fact, almost universally known as Hug Girl, and everyone knew who she was because of it; Rom's knowledge of auto racing and owning of cats are both common knowledge to most people in quizbowl now and are topics of conversation both with him and among others; Hannah Kirsch probably won't sue anyone because her page says she likes obscure classical composers and science fiction, etc.

The implication behind you saying I could host it myself is obviously correct: you and the new admins are doing a good thing by hosting any kind of qbwiki, even a whitewashed one, and it's ultimately your decision what you do with it. I'm not going to host it because this isn't something I'm actually that invested in; it isn't that big a deal, I'm just saying the concern of lawsuits and search engines is making the wiki less interesting.

bmcke · Post by **bmcke** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:33 pm

marnold wrote:The particular articles I was referencing are the edits to "Harvest Bowl" (which took out the particulars of why the tournament sucked) and "Honda Campus All-Star Challenge" (that took out the particulars of why some of its policies were hateful, one of the primary pieces of evidence of CBI being a terrible organization). Other things randomly culled from the recent changes page: Meredith Johnson was, in fact, almost universally known as Hug Girl, and everyone knew who she was because of it; Rom's knowledge of auto racing and owning of cats are both common knowledge to most people in quizbowl now and are topics of conversation both with him and among others; Hannah Kirsch probably won't sue anyone because her page says she likes obscure classical composers and science fiction, etc.

Most of those are H's, Marnold, so your issues might be specific to my edits. If that information is valid, I think there's a period of time where you can add it all back, once the wiki gets unlocked again.

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:10 am

I'll deal with the other posts in this thread tomorrow, but I've now finished everything I signed myself up for in the post above.

Can other people please update the status of their assignments?

bmcke · Post by **bmcke** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:20 am

My letters are finished.

(Is this how you update status?)

Mike Bentley · Post by **Mike Bentley** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 12:01 pm

bmcke wrote:My letters are finished.

(Is this how you update status?)

Yes, this is how you report your status on this project. Thanks for helping out.

Nine-Tenths Ideas · Post by **Nine-Tenths Ideas** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:30 pm

Wading my way through my letters. I'm hesitant to delete some things, but have no objection to letting "A. J. Raffles" go.