Wikipedia pages

[Ben Phillips]

(Splitting topic from "Wil Wheaton reviews Pseudopod".)

I'd love to make a PP wikipedia page.

It looks like someone created one and then it got deleted for "lack of notability", apparently because the Wikipedia editors need to be convinced a podcast, in particular, is notable enough to bother listing it.  I can understand this as a general rule given the strong tendency of podcasts to fade in less than a year or whatever, but it seems like Pseudopod and PodCastle should have some kind of advantage, being that Escape Pod got a listing.  However, viewing the reaction to Steve's input on the discussion page about the deletion, it looks like they don't want to hear from people running the podcast.  And these deletion review procedures are making my eyes cross.

Does it so happen that someone here has done this type of thing with Wikipedia before who could make some recommendations?

[eytanz]

Wikipedia's culture favors, by a wide margin, conventional media sources over internet sources. Which means that the best way to get a pseudopod/podcastle page is to get a mention, ideally an article, in a print newspaper or magazine, that makes the explicit statement that pseudopod or podcastle is important.

[Djibril]

This is true, but unless you have any print references to hand, there are still ways to make a page less likely to be deleted.

You need a thorough write-up (the sort of depth that the EP page has, for example), by one or preferably several people who are not EA editors or employees, citing references to PP/PC in other online publications. (Any reviews, interviews, write-ups out there?) It also helps if you can attach at least one illustration, link the page from an existing template (is a podcast a "magazine"? I would say so, but maybe you don't, for some reason?) The more other Wikipedia articles link to your page, the more disruption is caused by deleting it. (How many of your editors, narrators and authors have WP entries?) Having an experienced WP editor on board is useful too, both because they can help to make a page deletion-proof, and advocate for us in discussions. ("Pmcalduff" or "Cleduc" may be helpful--they seem to have edited a lot and have interest in speculative fiction topics...)

If anyone would like to start a discussion here or offline about drafting a page for PP or PC, let me know; I'd be happy to help. (Although I'm not the "experienced WP editor" cited above, I have had a few pages slated for deletion and successfully clawed some of them back.)