4 ms·

I'm far removed from Wikipedia's social/cultural realm and yet I've only ever heard negative things about the deletionist culture there. Is the deletionist rati

by cjslep 10y ago

I'm far removed from Wikipedia's social/cultural realm and yet I've only ever heard negative things about the deletionist culture there. Is the deletionist rationale that fewer articles == fewer spots for vandalism to occur?

jordigh 10y ago
I think people had a hard time taking Wikipedia seriously when there were more articles about Wookie culture and light sabre colours than there were about chickens or water. So, the deletionist culture seems to be about pride, focus on the serious business so that Wikipedia can be taken seriously and have a better reputation.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  Perhaps, but it's also a database and it doesn't really hurt anything. We can point at pretty much any article and find a strange influence of geek male culture all over the encyclopedia. "In Popular Culture" (which I think is now supposed to be removed from articles) all too often simply contained links to video games and obscure anime. Personally, I find the shift to wikia troubling. Mainly because it came down from Jimbo to purge the articles and move them to wikia, which ahem Jimbo runs and profits from.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    "In popular culture" sections almost never add anything, yeah.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I didn't know people took all the "Wikigroaning" stuff seriously.
maxerickson 10y ago
I don't think it is clear that there is really a deletionist culture. There's 5 million English articles. Even a very high quality bot will make hundreds or thousands of mistakes if it is doing anything vaguely interesting across a broad swath of articles. Which doesn't excuse having a crap process at the margin, but nor does a moderate volume of unfortunate experiences make the case that it is all falling apart.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I think it's a bit confusing to equate deletionism with something done by bots? The most infamous exchanges are almost all about active, human users seeing an article (possibly flagged by a bot), putting it up for Speedy Deletion, and steamrolling people who support keeping it. The more pernicious approach, related to the one detailed here, is that articles are "pruned" for quality (removing e.g. external links sections) and then deleted for being incomplete. My experience and reading certainly suggests that Wikipedia has a problem (as confirmed by new editor and article counts), but it largely seems to be about disparate groups aligning harmfully. Some people want to remove external links, some people want to fragment large articles into more focused sub articles, and some people want to delete everything that's excessively narrow or short on content. As a result, each faction does its thing and the end result is content moving from "good and comprehensive" to "deleted entirely" by several innocuous steps.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I think it's a bit confusing to equate deletionism with something done by bots? I don't think it's a big leap to assume that people running bots review the output less and less before acting on it.

by cjslep 10y ago

jordigh 10y ago

I think people had a hard time taking Wikipedia seriously when there were more articles about Wookie culture and light sabre colours than there were about chickens or water. So, the deletionist culture seems to be about pride, focus on the serious business so that Wikipedia can be taken seriously and have a better reputation.

jonathankoren 10y ago
Perhaps, but it's also a database and it doesn't really hurt anything. We can point at pretty much any article and find a strange influence of geek male culture all over the encyclopedia. "In Popular Culture" (which I think is now supposed to be removed from articles) all too often simply contained links to video games and obscure anime. Personally, I find the shift to wikia troubling. Mainly because it came down from Jimbo to purge the articles and move them to wikia, which ahem Jimbo runs and profits from.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  "In popular culture" sections almost never add anything, yeah.
emodendroket 10y ago
I didn't know people took all the "Wikigroaning" stuff seriously.

maxerickson 10y ago

I don't think it is clear that there is really a deletionist culture. There's 5 million English articles. Even a very high quality bot will make hundreds or thousands of mistakes if it is doing anything vaguely interesting across a broad swath of articles. Which doesn't excuse having a crap process at the margin, but nor does a moderate volume of unfortunate experiences make the case that it is all falling apart.

Bartweiss 10y ago
I think it's a bit confusing to equate deletionism with something done by bots? The most infamous exchanges are almost all about active, human users seeing an article (possibly flagged by a bot), putting it up for Speedy Deletion, and steamrolling people who support keeping it. The more pernicious approach, related to the one detailed here, is that articles are "pruned" for quality (removing e.g. external links sections) and then deleted for being incomplete. My experience and reading certainly suggests that Wikipedia has a problem (as confirmed by new editor and article counts), but it largely seems to be about disparate groups aligning harmfully. Some people want to remove external links, some people want to fragment large articles into more focused sub articles, and some people want to delete everything that's excessively narrow or short on content. As a result, each faction does its thing and the end result is content moving from "good and comprehensive" to "deleted entirely" by several innocuous steps.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I think it's a bit confusing to equate deletionism with something done by bots? I don't think it's a big leap to assume that people running bots review the output less and less before acting on it.