There's a recent problem with one Chris Mansanto deciding that he's the sole decider in the notability of programming languages on Wikipedia, so he's taking it on himself to delete all the languages that don't meet Wikipedia's Notability requirements. Let's put aside the insanely weird idea that one person has the ability to derail the creation of information unilaterally, without a vote, and without any oversight to focus on the real problem:

Notability Is Avoiding The Slash

Wikipedia's stupid notability page creation rule is effectively working around their software's inability to handle arbitrary paths to sub-pages. Yes, they don't want to create too many pages because they can't handle a nested namespace. Hell I got no idea if the software can or cannot, but they sure don't use it much. There's absolutely no reason you can't have sub-pages under Esoteric programming languages for each and every language on the planet. Wikipedia is just using social rules to solve a technical problem with the slash.

These requirements are entirely stupid for a programming language since they're primarily for people and biographical information and based on "popularity" in the regular press. In a way the entire Notability requirement simply props up the established publishing and music industries. You can literally read these requirements as "some big mega corp my grandma might encounter has mentioned it." This attitude completely eliminates a vast majority of sub-cultures, revolutionary movements, ethnic groups, and just about anything that mainstream media hasn't covered.

I could see such a requirement in a traditional encyclopedia with limited publishing space, but Wikipedia has not problem paying for storage. There's no need to not adjust or alter notability depending on the sub-culture that the topic exists in. It should be possible to petition to have a sub-culture page created, and then once that's created they can elect what their notability requirements are.

But, none of this matters because some dude decides that deleting pages is his thing, and there's nothing anyone can say about it. I find this bizarre. In every project where this happens I immediately wish I was able to elect that someone like this be fired. There should be a way to do it, but of course you can't. This happens with Debian, Ubuntu, Python, Ruby, any place where a few "core" dudes can come in and screw things up for others and nobody can get rid of them.

Well, I don't know how Wikipedia really works, but I do know how to fight against oppressive regimes with subversive actions, and any place where one dude can just erase any reference to the creative work of others unilaterally is definitely in need of some subversive actions.

Let's try a few plans for action.

Plan A

Plan A is that we game the fact that notability only covers page creation, not page content:

1. Hit the Esoteric programming languages page.
2. Take every language he deletes and put it there. The rules for notability do not apply to the content of a page. The only requirement for a page is that there's a reference to back up what you say.
3. Start filling in that one page with every damn esoteric language there is. Since there's nowhere to put it since, by its definition an esoteric language is never going to be Wikipedia-Notable, then it's gotta go somewhere.
4. Eventually that page will become a massive burden and (hopefully) someone will realize that their stupid Notability requirements can't handle esoteric languages and thus must be adjusted.

It's sort of impossible to say that the Esoteric programming languages page should not have a description of every "notnotable" programming language. Either they belong there, or they belong in their own pages. By filling the page beyond its reasonable limits they'll have to do something about the definition of "Notnotable" and programming languages which should have their own.

Plan B

Put out a yearly publication on Lulu.com which has all the year's esoteric programming languages. Publish it for only the cost of the book and then have it get into Amazon and other publishers, and elect Lulu to be the publisher of record. Lulu handles all of this, even giving out the ISBN number and registering with the Library of Congress. Once you do that you've got a "real" publisher publishing a book that talks about the language.

The interesting thing about this hack is that you can easily do it for nearly nothing, and it plays on the entire ethos of Wikipedia. If they claim that Lulu.com is not a real "Publisher", then they're effectively saying they are not a legit "Encyclopedia". I imagine you could also get several other publishers to publish the book if it were to get popular enough.

This publication is then a legit secondary source by a real publisher so it gives the languages notability. You could even create a series of similar publications under different corporate shells or in several formats to increase the amount of reference material.

Interestingly, this could be the impetus of a wikipedia focusing on the subculture of programming and hacking. That can then be the source for the published books and in an ironic way, you'd be subverting Wikipedia's notability by creating a wiki that gets published.

Plan C

They need donations. I bet many programmers are big donors to Wikipedia and I bet they also are fans of the languages being deleted. We can start a campaign along the lines of, "I gave Wikipedia $100 and all they did was delete my favorite programming language." I'm pretty sure next year when Wikipedia start asking for donations I'm going to come out strong and campaign against them.

My personal opinion is I will not give my money to any organization that tries to erase the legitimate cultures (sub or not) of any group. If your organization is trying to ask me for money to create some kind of repository of human knowledge, and then a month later your erase my primary culture's primary history then kiss my ass.

Plan D

I have registered notnotable.com. It's just parked right now, but if anyone wants to fork Wikipedia and collect up some cash to run it, I'd be down. Just put up the same software, get some free hosting from some of the companies out there that I know, and start filling it in with anything that's not on Wikipedia. Given the rate that they delete content on Wikipedia I imagine notnotable.com could become bigger than Wikipedia. At a minimum it could be a good way to drain donations from them and start a war.

A Real Technical Solution

Wikipedia needs to seriously just change things so that you can create a "Meta Category Page". These stupid rules are basically assuming that there's one source of human knowledge which constitutes the culture that corporations who run publishing, music, movies and education promote. By creating simple meta pages that can have entire sub-genres of content under them, Wikipedia can then adopt a policy that nothing is deleted, it's just "subbed".

With "Meta-Pages" the rule would then change that if it's not notable, then it has to fit into a meta page as a sub. This not only allows you to capture more human knowledge but also better organize it and prevent these bizarre insecure men from deleting things that don't fit into their narrow upper middle class Ph.D. backgrounds.

Either way, I'm definitely not interested in donating and definitely going to start campaigning against Wikipedia.