the Mkratz thread

Editors, Admins and Bureaucrats blecch!
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ericbarbour
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the Mkratz thread

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:17 pm

Have noticed this editor before, given the business I'm in and my connections to vacuum tube collectors.

Was searching for something else, and stumbled over this utterly spurious website. Under his name.

https://mkratz.pt/

Mkratz, claiming to be a refugee from German Wikipedia (due to "exclusionist-trolls-turned-WikiAdmins" of course!), is the primary author of List of vacuum tubes, perennially one of en-WP's longest articles, and a principal author of various lesser related articles.

He (?) did most of his work in 2012-2013.
Screenshot_2021-07-31 List of vacuum tubes - Page History - XTools.png
Screenshot_2021-07-31 List of vacuum tubes - Page History - XTools.png (64.54 KiB) Viewed 1088 times
That is how you fight off deletionists if you have a mass of obscure information that isn't Googleable easily--you put up your own website and pile the info up in there. Then you have a "googlelable reference" that even the biggest Beeblebrox/fool on WP will usually yield to. (That has not prevented "List of vacuum tubes" from being vandalized and hacked up by passing loonies occasionally. But over the long term it has kept the article large and decently well-protected.) It is very sad that one must resort to this to prevent facts from being Wiki-Deleted, but that's showbiz for you.

Anyone who wanted to belabor Ward Cunningham, or even Jimbo, on the inherent weaknesses of the "wiki" approach to building a database of general information, here you go. The generally poor handling of "List of" articles on WP is an excellent baseball bat. They are not well managed AND difficult to use. I'd also suggest including the Wikidata project as something necessary, but not dreamed of by Cunningham. He is NOT a Godly Genius Of The Internet. Not even "important".

I wonder if this Mkratz has a copy of Lud Sibley's Tube Lore book. Of which I have several editions. Because a lot of info on obscure tubes is available nowhere else. It appears he has stuck to "primary sources", Frank's Tube Data site, radiomuseum.org and a few other personal sites. Most of which belong to TCA members or other people I know.

Wikipedia: if you can't google it up in 10 seconds, it doesn't exist.

Mkratz did the fuckers a BIG FAVOR and they don't even know it happened. And don't care.

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Re: the Mkratz thread

Post by Jake Is A Sellout » Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:26 pm

Nah, the wikishits aren't deterred by obscure sources these days. I have literally seen articles deleted simply because it makes sense to these fuckwits to argue that if a source has limited circulation, then even if it's a nationally distributed magazine produced by a reputable publishing house, it's somehow proof the topic isn't notable enough for Wikipedia.

The publishers probably love it if whatever information people have transcribed from paper knowledge to Wikipedia is being lost to the deletionists. Lots of these niche titles have only survived by remaining steadfastly dead tree, using their web presence only to sell subscriptions, teasing interest with small news pieces.

I have a feeling this is yet another unforeseen consequence of the utterly pointless war against corporate spam. I am pretty sure in that debate, the spectre of NCORP was raised somehow, even though the topics and articles are about as far removed from spam as you could imagine.

To a Wikipedia editor of course, it seems naturally suspicious that people like these publishers still have the temerity to put a commercial value on the words they print. It offends them.

That article looks like an easy target for deletion these days. Just a matter of time.

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