OStatic

by piege on Mar. 19, 2010

That is ridiculous, who do these people beleive they are to know what is good for wikipedia and what isn't. I think that tiny bit of information is relevant. If you don't like it well just don't read it and spend your time working on something constructive.

They do realise that what isn't relevant now might be relevant tomorrow ?

How can you be certain without any doubt that a piece of information will be totally useless that anybody at any point in time for the rest of wikipedia's life?

Maybe they could categorise stuff but i doubt that deleting anything is the way to go...

by Cody L. Custis on Mar. 19, 2010

I've had my own run ins with the deleteopedia crowd.

I initially wrote a stub article on Lucious Pusey, a football player with an interesting name who plays for Eastern Illinois University. I was then inspired to write a stub on Bobby Hauck, a football coach for the University of Montana. Both articles were deleted within five minutes by a Wikipedia administrator. No ‘articles recommended for deletion’ tag, outright deleted within five minutes of post. I reposted, they were deleted again, by the same administrator.

The situation stayed that way for a year, when I told the story online. Another administrator, who lived in India, wrote a fine article about Bobby Hauck (I remember him apologizing for his lack of American football understanding, when it is far better than anything that I could write). The article has been improved over time, and now there is a great entry on Bobby Hauck.

There are two problems with the deleteopedia crowd. First, they violate Wikipedia’s own policies, which are that articles should be recommended for deletion which sets off discussion in talk pages, rather than deleted immediately. Second, although Bobby Hauck might not have been notable on his own, Bobby Hauck was notable as part of the line of Montana Grizzlies head coaches. Thus, the article actually filled in a broken link. Third, although Lucious was decided to be non-memorable, the Wikipedia has an article on baseball players with interesting names. By parallelism, there should either be articles (or sections of articles) for both football and baseball players, or sections for neither.

I wholehearted agree that the deleteopedia crowd has gotten out of hand. Wikipedia should represent a store of knowledge for humanity, as decided by the willingness of individuals to write articles. If someone is willing to take the time to write an article, that alone is enough justification for the article to exist, be it for a fourteen year old ‘who is a really cool person and has lots of friends’ or for Star Wars bounty hunters.

by Steven Walling on Mar. 19, 2010

This is all totally overblown.

The conclusion of the deletion discussion was that there was no consensus to delete, so the article defaults to being kept. That decision has been appealed (which is the banner on the article now), but so far the comments have been nearly all in favor of endorsing the "no consensus" conclusion.

In other words, the article probably isn't going to be deleted.

This wasn't a special case in Wikipedia's workings. It's simply that some particularly noisy free software geeks extrapolated the potential deletion of one favorite article into a system-wide problem that doesn't exist.

by wikipedian on Mar. 19, 2010

The Association of Deletionist Wikipedians is 1)far from serious and 2) mostly dates from 2005. It's not a factor in current debates. The critical factors in current debates are verifiability and reliable sources. The problem is things like dwm are for the most part only written about by their fans in the likes of blogs and mailing lists. neither of which are generally considered reliable sources and also tend to suffer from the problem that it is pretty much impossible to write a neutral article based on that. In many ways the wikipedia issues are a reflection of the fact that the open source community hasn’t done a great job of collating it’s history. Other enthusiast areas on such as railways where this is issue is extensively addressed tend not to face any risk of deletion on wikipedia.

by wikipedian on Mar. 19, 2010

Cody L. Custi your article on Lucious Pusey consisted of:

Lucious Pusey plays football for the [[Eastern Illinois Panthers]].

[[Category:Humorously named people|Pusey, Lucious]]

Technicaly pushing the speedy deletion criteria a bit but understandable

by Danese Cooper on Mar. 19, 2010

Zonker,

Thanks for the blog on this important topic. I've been CTO of Wikimedia Foundation for about 6 weeks now and have been receiving a crash-course education on the workings of this community. I am quite concerned about deletionism and its demoralizing effect on new contributors. I've heard horror stories from many of my friends around the FOSS world who have tried to edit in areas where they are domain experts, only to give up because its too hard to get edits to "stick".

At this point I should point out that my job at Wikimedia is about improving the technical side of sites like Wikipedia and as such I am not the "go-to" person for community issues, but I completely agree with the statements in your last paragraph. Current notability norms feel (to me as a newbie, anyway) like too high a barrier to participation for domain experts who happen to be Wikipedian newbies.

by Danese Cooper on Mar. 19, 2010

Zonker,

Thanks for the blog on this important topic. I've been CTO of Wikimedia Foundation for about 6 weeks now and have been receiving a crash-course education on the workings of this community. I am quite concerned about deletionism and its demoralizing effect on new contributors. I've heard horror stories from many of my friends around the FOSS world who have tried to edit in areas where they are domain experts, only to give up because its too hard to get edits to "stick".

At this point I should point out that my job at Wikimedia is about improving the technical side of sites like Wikipedia and as such I am not the "go-to" person for community issues, but I completely agree with the statements in your last paragraph. Current notability norms feel (to me as a newbie, anyway) like too high a barrier to participation for domain experts who happen to be Wikipedian newbies.

by Pat Gunn on Mar. 19, 2010

It's a challenge to keep the encyclopedia as an encyclopedia rather than a directory or a generic hosted website - deletionists serve the project by keeping it on-topic. The "people might find it useful" argument is spurious - there are other sites on the internet, and there's google. If a topic isn't such that some imagined person 20, 50, or 100 years from now wouldn't see the relevance, it probably doesn't belong on Wikipedia.

Example:

Specific model of Dell computer: out

Brand of cookie: out

Chemical element: in

Significant work of art: in

Philosophical concept: in

Broad type of object (e.g. SSD, pogo stick): in

Remember - Wikipedia aims to be an encyclopedia, not a directory nor every website on the internet.

by Pat Gunn on Mar. 19, 2010

Oh, for reference, I'm Pat Gunn, formerly a very active and semi-prominent Wikipedian by the username of Improv.

by Joe Brockmeier on Mar. 19, 2010

@Pat What I object to, pretty strenuously, is the idea that the deletionists are doing any good whatsoever at judging what is or isn't "on topic" or relevant.

The idea of an imagined person in 20 years needing to find it relevant *might* be a reasonable use case. I doubt that 50 or 100 years is. (Pretty optimistic thinking that wikipedia itself will be relevant in 20 years, much less 100 or that very much of the content will be in its like form.)

Using the dwm example... in 20 years, I could certainly find a reference to it useful when writing up a history of window managers or just researching the topic. I'd find an entry describing any 20-year-old program of any note (i.e., something that had a significant number of users) relevant *now*.

by Russ Nelson on Mar. 19, 2010

Pat Gunn, I'm a sometimes active Wikipedia by the username RussNelson. I guess we can take at face value that you're really Improv, but really, who is to say?

I'm an anti-deletionist. If an article is a stub, and it isn't spam (not obviously advertising, no external links), leave it there for a while, and see if it gets better. If it doesn't, mark it as a stub, and see if that prods anyone into improving it. As for notability, try googling for the subject. If you find many mentions of it, then clearly SOMEBODY is noticing it.

Otherwise, you just piss off domain experts. When the domain is narrow (e.g. railroad history), you might just piss off the only person who knows something about something that many people are interested in.

by wikipedian on Mar. 19, 2010

Russ Nelson thing is that the railroad fans have over the years built up a massive amount of citable work. As a result it's not a problem having articles about individual stations.

Joe Brockmeier

If you are writing a history of open source software you would want to go to primary sources. Wikipedia is depending on how you define things a tertiary source with some secondary source elements mixed in. Again someone else needs to write a history of dwm (and other open source software) in a citable form so that wikipedia can cite it.

by Jeff Dickey on Mar. 19, 2010

Agree with Russ, Cody and (rather obviously) Zonker. At least one of the following is self-evident:

1. Wikipedia is more interested in being a faddish clique than a truly community-based movement;

2. The Foundation has its heart in the right place, but the deletionists are out of control;

3. A major disconnect exists between policy and practice, allowing pretentious, self-appointed stickybeaks to ruin Wikipedia and its potential for a large and increasing number of people.

I find the entire attitude — would that it were limited only to entries on FLOSS — utterly reprehensible. I've made extensive use of Wikipedia for years, but as a matter of principle I now look for any and all alternative wikis first. They've taken some very good wiki software and built the most self-satisfied boys' treehouse club out of it. Pity.

by Jeff Dickey on Mar. 19, 2010

I also find it interesting that none of the pro-Wikipedia entries were made using registered accounts; i.e., there's absolutely no reason or way to call a windbag like "wikipedian" (as if he were the only one!) on his bloviation.

by wikipedian on Mar. 19, 2010

Jeff Dickey

>1. Wikipedia is more interested in being a faddish clique than a truly community-based movement;

Wikipedia wants to be an encyclopaedia

>2.The Foundation has its heart in the right place, but the deletionists are out of control;

Deletionists haven't existed as a coherent force since schoolwatch got it's way back in 2005. You are jumping at something that has long since ceased to be. Today’s battles are far more multifaceted.

>I also find it interesting that none of the pro-Wikipedia entries were made using registered accounts;

Because none of us are regular users of ostatic nor are we likely to become so.

by El Spamolito on Mar. 20, 2010

For my own personal experience, yes. Having tried to update several hospital medical articles (my particular specialty) I've seen my edits dissolved because I do not have a big history of edits. I can understand this, however how many edits much I contribute before they start to get accepted - maybe medical articles are just under particularly heavy scrutiny.

by an anonymous user on Mar. 21, 2010

Is this "meatpuppeting"

by HdCreepy on Mar. 22, 2010

One thing I don't get: if something is written by fans, than edit out the content and make it an empty stub. Why delete the whole thing?

by HdCreepy on Mar. 22, 2010

So far the discussion here is mostly on the verifiability or the partiality of an article, which are easier to prove one way or otherwise. What about the debate on "notablity"?

Now don't get me wrong, I am also not the biggest fan of having a stub of just some random college football player in it (not referring to any specific case here), but there was one moment when I really see the problem of deleting articles:

--it was Susan Boyle's article. The deletion war began about one week after her initial appearance, way after her video become a big hit on youtube. And the basis for her deletion? "She isn't notable enough to justify keeping the article." WTF? Of course she didn't have any platinum album back then, but it was obvious that she was becoming a phenomenon. A paradigm of some sort--may be about "mundane people making it to the top" or "the power of reality TV" or whatever it is, but definitely not unnotable.

The reason I was looking for her article (and witnessed the debate) was because I was including her example in one of my paper, and Wikipedia was the best starting point. The fact that the article was needed academically, for my homework at least, implies that

1) Susan Boyle's example was significant enough back then to be seriously study

2) Her entry is needed. I had its "market". am sure I wasn't the only one who wrote about her.

Were her entry deleted, I probably wouldn't include her in my own paper. But if Wikipedia is kept that lean and exclusive, why don't I just refer to a traditional encyclopedia? I really don't think the strength of Wikipedia has anything to do with equal-participation; I see its advantage at its all inclusive-ness. I don't see why we need Wikipedia at all if it is just another encyclopedia.

by an anonymous user on Mar. 22, 2010

On short: The wikipedia is going down the hill, as in all cases when a 'big bureaucracy' is formed and cause the growing to stagnate. Wikipedia grown from a beautiful child into an ugly adult, with all the modern diseases (fear, doubt, 'violence', etc.)

-

Who will start an article if not the fans?

A couple of weeks a go I've noticed that the search ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?...") shows me "Scripts should use an informative User-Agent string with contact information, or they may be IP-blocked without notice. ".

If I change the User-Agent from empty ("") to "." the search will work. Isn't this a stupid (as in useless and time consuming) blocking? The User-Agent is so easy to be changed, especially from scripts.

The future of wikipedia is showed by its history. In the beginning it was fearless. Many doubted about its future with so few rules (anybody could change an article). Gradually the fear appeared ("we must add a new restriction for this") and the wikipedia is turning into what old critics wanted. And this way is lossing that which make it grown. Of course it can be argued that we are in a different situation now, but the reality of the fear is present.

BTW, the wikipedia started booming because the new articles was less encyclopedic (IMO).

by an anonymous user on Mar. 22, 2010

those fucking moronic deletionists are scum of the earth.

i once wrote an article for my company because i happen to read an article about ibm. the ibm article discusses about the culture in the workplace so i thought i also want to share the culture in our office and how the company has helped almost every employee in many aspects of their lives (money, advice, etc.)

in less than 5 minutes the article was deleted to kingdom come by the moronic deletionists and when i asked why, the answer was: not notable. WTF!!! ibm is not know by everyone on this planet so what difference does that make? how do you measure notability? i believe it cannot be measured unless you ask each and everyone on this planet if they know ibm.

deleting articles gives this moronic idiots a high that's why they like doing it!

by Aeiluindae on Mar. 22, 2010

They already deleted the entry for awesome window manager, originally a dwm derivative, because the only sources about it were blogs and the author's own site. A geeky window manager does not get covered in objective third-party sources, instead information about it gets passed around the web, and most of those people will just link to the author's website, because the website is very good and informative. However, I would argue that something like awesome or dwm is more notable than all the sci-fi trivia that is covered in great detail on fan sites. The fact that the article on Content Management Systems is shorter than the articles on most actors, no matter how minor, seems to indicate a problem. When I was looking for a new window manager, I went to forums and wikipedia. Wikipedia articles provide nice summaries of obscure topics, summaries that you won't get elsewhere, generally. If I wanted a normal encyclopedia, I'd subscribe to Brittanica. I want a place where I can search for something interesting, find some basic info at the very least, and jump right into more info. Google doesn't do that because it doesn't write articles. Normal encyclopedias, online or otherwise, are either very specialized, or out of date.

by JAPrufrock on Mar. 22, 2010

Delitionism is a form of authoritarianism. What we need is a very efficient, intelligent, compassionate benevolent despot to run Wikipedia. Are you listening Wikipedia? It's what happens to a supposedly democratic medium that is owed and controlled by a private organization. I had a similar problem with the Ubuntu community forum. One of the moderators of the forum didn't like the topic of one of my threads, so she deleted it. I think that I was comparing Ubuntu to XP, or something similarly innocuous. So I wrote another thread discussing the idea that the forum needed moderators to oversea moderators. That thread lasted less than 36 hours before it too was deleted. So I wrote my last thread, complaining that fascism had seeped into the Ubuntu fora (forums). Of course, I was then banned from the fora for life. So I'm now using Debian, and belong to a more hang-loose, tolerant community. But my point is this: Wikipedia is promoted like Ubuntu, saying that it is community based, and we members/users assume that it's democratic, but it isn't. It may be community based, but it's not democratic. So contributors spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, but have no say in policy. Aye, there's the rub.

by an anonymous user on Mar. 22, 2010

Good to have the debate.

Wikipedia is slowly maturing as a project.

Early on, anybody who could chuck out a page was welcome.

Later editors found existing articles in their sphere of knowledge and knocked them into shape. Part of this was merging similar topics, pruning ridiculous lists of someone's belly-button-fluff collection - and refining the Policies and Guidelines so we all knew what was what.

Now that much of what needs to be said has been said, and said increasingly well, responsible editors are turning more to these kinds of shaping issues and increasingly tackling the topics that remain on the border line, creating storms in teacups like this one. "Deletionist" is a parody of this work.

Eventually Wikipedia will need little more than updates with the day's news, and editing activity will fade to a shadow of its glory days.

by an anonymous user on Mar. 22, 2010

It's very interesting to also consider the Wikipedia statistics history, especially those regarding the amount of active and very active contributors. As you will see for the English edition, both numbers were rising until 2007. As from then, both numbers saw a consistent yearly decrease.

Compare this with the Linux project which still sees a continued growth. The difference of interest in both projects is that Linux accepts driver contributions for hardware of which there exist only 1 piece. You don't have to worry your contribution will be deleted by other "contributors" who define a valuable contribution is deleting other contributions.

The same is not true for Wikipedia. If you contribute very specific content to Wikipedia, and thus maybe invest a fair amount of time in the project, it may become a waste of time when your contribution is deleted because some "contributors" think deleting your contribution is more valuable than keeping or improving it.

Obviously, this Wikipedia policy is *very* discouraging to real contributors and causes them (including myself) to leave the project to invest their valuable time in other projects.

Proposed solution to fix the Wikipedia project: make it *much* harder to delete content, unless the content is spam or illegal content.

by Rufus Polson on Mar. 22, 2010

There definitely seems to be a bias in Wikipedia towards trivial popular culture, which makes one wonder a lot when some technical topic is deemed "not notable". There are often extensive articles describing relatively obscure Japanese manga. This is handy for me as someone who reads obscure manga, and I have no objection to the presence of these articles. But if you're going to allow that, it rings rather hollow when you complain about *anything* being "not notable".

by Bernard Swiss on Mar. 22, 2010

The problem is that "notable" is an inherently subjective concept.

Notability is often confused with "popularity", or with one's ability to imagine someone (or even someone else) being interested or finding certain information useful.

Attempts to predict what will be of interest 20, 50, or 250 years in the future are about as reliable as efforts to predict the future generally are -- which is to say, not very (1).

A "real" or "traditional" encyclopedia must of course employ some fairly strict regime of controlling the number and length of entries, for the simple reason that an encyclopedia based on "Opaque Cellulose Technology" faces rather rigorous limits due to available storage volume and expense of production. These concerns also apply to Wikipedia -- but to a much lesser degree, and the limits appear to be some ways off (perhaps indefinitely?). This provides much of Wikipedia's value -- it can afford to treat matter that would be un-economic or burdensome to a more traditional encyclopedia.

There is one other factor that needs mentioning; that is the (generally unconscious?) desire on the part of a certain class participants to see themselves as part of an elite class or prestigious institution, but fear that their participation is not at an externally acknowledged elite level or in a genuinely respectable or prestigious enterprise, who consequently fear that appearing to depart from some perceived higher pre-existing standard somehow reflects upon them or the project to which they have attached themselves. One can see this in many fields -- computing science, linguistics, sports, the fine arts, to name just a few. One might consider this a variant of the "wanna-be" phenomenon, only in this case, these are "wanna-be's" that have managed to find themselves a relatively high rung in some formal group. In the context of Wikipedia, one might call these "Britannica wanna-be's" , who fear that their efforts with Wikipedia might not quite measure up to the standard the "the real encyclopedia" and feel a need to conclusively demonstrate that they and their project truly conform to the standard of "the real thing".

That said, I am currently more concerned with "astroturf" contributions and edits than with deletionism -- though both trends bear watching.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(1) An interesting example that recently came to my attention is that of British Navy ships' logs. I'm not talking about famous warships, here, but every frigate, sloop, mail-packet, supply-vessel, and exploration/charting expedition that ever left home waters -- it turns out that since the BN had official, well documented and carefully observed procedures for making good, consistent measurements of all aspects of positioning and weather reporting and recording of the same, the BN ship's logs are a valuable source of oceanographic weather data which would otherwise be unavailable to climatologists seeking to learn, study, and model oceanographic climatology and climate change. But at the time these records were made and eventually warehoused, no-one could foresee that this data from otherwise boring and distinctly * un-notable * ships, voyages and data would ever be of any conceivable use to anybody ever again, and they were retained originally merely for distantly possible legal reasons, and then to satisfy inevitable bureaucratic inertia.

by Jose_X on Mar. 22, 2010

Joe, why don't you:

1 -- Modify all the Wikipedia pages you want to modify.

2 -- Gather links to the version of all of those pages that includes the page as you left it.

3 -- Post those links on relevant mailing lists or otherwise share with others, and encourage others to promote your edits (ie, if they like your contributions) by helping to tack them back on to the current version of each page.

4 -- Wash, rinse, and repeat for as long as you care about Wikipedia.

If what you contributed has merit within the relevant community, I think those members would team up with you to help keep those pages alive.

We have to understand that in a democracy, those that have to gain will use their dollars or other influence to win over "votes". There is no avoiding that. Fight fire with fire and may the hotter flame win.

As far as gaining legitimate secondary sources for FOSS projects, have the Wikipedia contributor write the article and host it somewhere, ideally, contribute the article to the project's website. Also, the article should be "signed off" by those that are close to the code, as this will give the article legitimacy (naturally, if the project hosts the article on its home page, that would do).

People that edit pages should know the basic guidelines and be polite.

Finally, I agree that marked-up flawed data is better than having access to no data at all. As an analogy to taggings (for deficiency) being preferred over deletions: consider the filing of a bug report to a flaw in the Linux kernel circa 1992 vs. the whole kernel being "deleted" (having the raw, flawed source removed from public access) back then for being "too amateurish for public consumption".

Will Wikipedia follow in the steps of wikimedia and FOSS (publish frequently), or will it allow itself to be hijacked by those that want to manage information to fit their agenda and "high standards" or by those that want Wikipedia to give up its main advantage? Wikipedia losses its competitive edge over the "pros" if it raises the bar to amateur contributions by too much. An encyclopedia "for the people" should be to the liking "of the people", and people need to be allowed to make mistakes. [Anyway, I suggested asking people to keep links to old edits and simply copying these back in as necessary and to publishing those old links in places to drum up support and volunteers.]

by Jose_X on Mar. 22, 2010

Aeiluindae, isn't this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome_(window_manager) the awesome window manager entry?

To add to an earlier comment about leveraging people to help maintain a page they might be interested in, Linux distros can come with a list of Wikipedia links and ways to remind their users that they can contribute to those distro (or to other FOSS) projects by helping to maintain these Wikipedia pages. A distro can include on the LiveCD/DVD or on its home page what it would like to be present on Wikipedia. Users can read this information before editing or creating a new page. The distro should also make editing the relevant Wikipedia pages as close to one-click, brain-dead as possible. A distro can even be designed with this theme in mind (of maintaining Wikipedia) and come with a list of thousands of Wikipedia pages (eg, a daily reminder app/service can pick one such page at random). Of course, all FOSS projects should have one or more official Linux distros designed to showcase (teach, contribute, etc) that project's software.

In reply to those wanting a limited Wikipedia, those that promote "Not Notable" likely have interests in the status quo or among those currently in power. "If we could all just agree" on a well-defined set of pages that "deserve" Wikipedia entries, then it helps these people compete against the many small folks also vying for attention. Imagine if the Linux kernel could have been written off before it took off, using the excuse that it wasn't prominent and hence did not deserve shelf space before the public. Those that gain with "not notable" are the establishment. Those that lose are the future competitors. IMO, Wikipedia should not condone rules that favor the establishment. If an article is about something obscure, perhaps state that, move it onto a separate alphabetical listing, or do something similar. Removal of information that that may only have limited appeal should be penalized. It should be a valued rule in Wikipedia to protect information. If we can't have a low bar for keeping information, then the big boys have won (including the traditional encyclopedias), and Wikipedia won't be a reflection of the people at large. [Just my opinion, of course.]

by an anonymous user on Apr. 03, 2010

Its gotten to the point now when you're searching for an article and don't find it (although finding references to the person in other articles) you wonder if someone found that person not important enough - not that someone had not attempted to submit an entry. Wikipedia is decreasing its own relevance.

by Jason T on May. 12, 2010

I think this "debate" is so one-sided I feel compelled to chime in. There are always two sides to a story. Early on, yes, more articles, more detail are good. But eventually, you get to the other side. Pretend there were 1 billion articles each a billion words long. Pretend. Then how useful would it be that there are 20 articles on Obama instead of one. Like 20 blogs. Wikipedia is not a blog. Thank god. Page limits and page charges exist for most real respectable scientific journals FOR A REASON. At some point quality needs to be considered. Sure, a few good articles will get deleted. But that's the price you pay for the FREE service THAT IS NOT A DUMB BLOG from a teenager trying to get laid working at a pizza joint posting his random opinions about underage drinking.

Jason T.

by an anonymous user on Jun. 02, 2010

Re: Jason T

"Page limits and page charges exist for most real respectable scientific journals FOR A REASON. At some point quality needs to be considered."

Your logic is flawed. The reason why page limits and page charges exist for scientific journals is because of the physical costs of printing, distribution, paying people for layout & design, and other sundry costs. If journals had no limits, you'd see 1000-page journals every month.

Wikipedia DOES NOT EXIST in any physical media. It exists as data on servers, which means you CAN have 1 billion articles or 1 trillion articles, each a billion words long. That's the whole point of having something like Wikipedia. Yes, of course the information needs to be accurate, etc. But if someone can provide that accurate information (and yes, sources, etc.) then who cares?

I was a Wiki admin for about 5 years before I abandoned the place in disgust because of people deleting or merging articles based on their own personal opinion as to what constitutes notability. The fact is, assuming the article isn't nonsense and vandalism, notability in a non-physical venue such as Wikipedia should encompass anything that generates enough interest for somebody to create an article about, whether it's an article on Armpit, Saskatchewan, or some obscure computer language code that existed for a few months, or an episode of Farscape. Quality is a completely subjective and "NPOV" opinion and should have zero bearing. If the article is written by someone with a decent command of the English language (or whatever language applies to the version of Wikipedia at hand), who provides accurate information in a format that allows that information to be disseminated, the you have quality. Any other argument and you're trying to regulate CONTENT, which becomes censorship.

The fact there are now "wiki" sites being created away from Wikipedia for specialized topics indicates that Wikipedia is a fail because people are driving away to other venues. And that shouldn't happen. Ironically, some of these spin-off Wikis are themselves now breeding deletionists as well, which has led me to bid a few of them adieu.

Until people grow up and realize that this is the Internet age any boasts of Wikipedia being a "repository of all knowledge" as I've heard the claim made, will be met with laughter by me.

by MSA on Aug. 22, 2010

I was very interested in your deletionism topic, having experienced it on a much more micro level. It is micro managed.

I live in an area of about 9,000 people, wihere there are plans for 600 more houses on agircultural land.

So I put an article from my website how to find info, defintily of interest in 20 yeas, and I see Wikipedi as inportant for information. My 2 lines got deletes yet an couple of lines by the "editor" of a site that basically calls the area a chav, but rjected (nonsenses and a campaign) got left in.

there is one person who is the sole arbiter to put any inforamtion. And trying to challenge it, I got lost gave up, and am not doing my own personal boycott of not clicking on the website if I can help it.

If it contains anodyne iinformation that anyone would know, what's the point?

by David W. on Jul. 22, 2011

The real issue is not 'deletionism' vs. 'inclusionism', but instead having clear standards of notability. I stopped being a Wikipedia editor because there was no consistency about what is notable and what isn't. From what I saw, new articles about places were often accepted with little issue, new articles about people might or might not be deleted depending on the person's field, whereas new articles about things or ideas were overwhelmingly rejected.

For example, write a Wikipedia article about a park, church, museum, or place of interest near your house, and just have one reference, and I can guarantee you that article will be accepted. On the other hand, you will face an uphill battle if you attempt to add an article about an a new product or a new religion, despite that fact that far more people around the world would likely be interested in either one instead of that park near your house.

The final straw for me was after I flagged an article about a college professor who wasn't very well-known, which had no references, and which seemed one-sided. I got the impression that the professor wrote the article about himself. I got hell from the author of the article, and I was informed of a special Wikipedia policy allows articles on professors not to have references, and which makes almost all professors notable. Personally, I have no problem with all professors being notable, but I find it very inconsistent considering that a few days before Wikipedia deleted an article about the president of a mid-sized company, calling him not notable.