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"In Wikipedia, debates can be won by stamina. If you care more and argue longer, you will tend to get your way. The result, very often, is that individuals and

"In Wikipedia, debates can be won by stamina. If you care more and argue longer, you will tend to get your way. The result, very often, is that individuals and organizations with a very strong interest in having Wikipedia say a particular thing tend to win out over other editors who just want the encyclopedia to be solid, neutral, and reliable" That's why I stopped sending them money. That and deletionism.

derleth 14y ago
Everyone is a deletionist about something. Now watch as people try to delete this comment with downvotes.
- lukifer 14y ago
  Deletionism is like the Myers-Briggs personality types: it's not about what you do all the time, but rather the more common reflex/tendency. Yes, there should be an upper limit; a wiki page for the sandwich I had last Thursday would go too far. But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete.
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    > But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete. Its not about storage, its about mission. Wikipedia has a purpose. Many things do not fit that purpose (even many things for which the Wikimedia Foundation is happy to have its storage used, hence why the Foundation has other projects besides Wikipedia.) Just because its is worth having somewhere on the internet (even in a publicly-editable place on the internet hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation) doesn't mean it belongs on Wikipedia.
  - derleth 14y ago
    That would destroy Wikipedia's utility as a reference for stuff that exists in the real world. A website should be allowed to focus on what it does best without being forced to be all things to all people.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    There's too much stuff in WP already. Important articles have errors or poor sources. Just noodling through the important articles fixing sources and style and language is too much work. Doing that for bus routes or every Minecraft block or whatever just invites bitrot.
lambda 14y ago
I used to be staunchly against deletionism, but having had more experience with exactly the above kind of page, where someone who cares a lot about some organization or topic that really isn't at all notable can go to an awful lot of trouble to create stuff that just junks up Wikipedia with biased, poorly researched and poorly cited pages, I am a lot more sympathetic to deletionism these days. There are real costs to maintaining pages; editors need to revert vandalism, fix it to match the style guidelines, look for citations, resolve disputes, keep it neutral, ensure that it reflects a broad consensus about the actual truth of the matter, and so on. For small, insignificant topics, an article can be more trouble than it's worth.
- tingletech 14y ago
  destruction is selection, and selection is destruction
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  You could always stub and protect such a page instead of deleting it. I don't care about orgs but when a band or programming language bages get deleted i'm not happy.

derleth 14y ago

Everyone is a deletionist about something. Now watch as people try to delete this comment with downvotes.

lukifer 14y ago
Deletionism is like the Myers-Briggs personality types: it's not about what you do all the time, but rather the more common reflex/tendency. Yes, there should be an upper limit; a wiki page for the sandwich I had last Thursday would go too far. But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete.
- dragonwriter 14y ago
  > But in a world of quasi-infinite storage, I think inclusionism should be the default, with a strong burden of proof required to delete. Its not about storage, its about mission. Wikipedia has a purpose. Many things do not fit that purpose (even many things for which the Wikimedia Foundation is happy to have its storage used, hence why the Foundation has other projects besides Wikipedia.) Just because its is worth having somewhere on the internet (even in a publicly-editable place on the internet hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation) doesn't mean it belongs on Wikipedia.
- derleth 14y ago
  That would destroy Wikipedia's utility as a reference for stuff that exists in the real world. A website should be allowed to focus on what it does best without being forced to be all things to all people.
- DanBC 14y ago
  There's too much stuff in WP already. Important articles have errors or poor sources. Just noodling through the important articles fixing sources and style and language is too much work. Doing that for bus routes or every Minecraft block or whatever just invites bitrot.

lambda 14y ago

I used to be staunchly against deletionism, but having had more experience with exactly the above kind of page, where someone who cares a lot about some organization or topic that really isn't at all notable can go to an awful lot of trouble to create stuff that just junks up Wikipedia with biased, poorly researched and poorly cited pages, I am a lot more sympathetic to deletionism these days. There are real costs to maintaining pages; editors need to revert vandalism, fix it to match the style guidelines, look for citations, resolve disputes, keep it neutral, ensure that it reflects a broad consensus about the actual truth of the matter, and so on. For small, insignificant topics, an article can be more trouble than it's worth.

tingletech 14y ago
destruction is selection, and selection is destruction
guard-of-terra 14y ago
You could always stub and protect such a page instead of deleting it. I don't care about orgs but when a band or programming language bages get deleted i'm not happy.