Debating "Deletionism" At Wikipedia

Ian Lamont writes "In a strange turn of events, the Wikipedia entry for Deletionpedia — an online archive of deleted Wikipedia articles — is now being considered for deletion. The entry for Deletionpedia was created shortly after the publication of an Industry Standard article and a discussion on Slashdot this week. Almost immediately, it was nominated for deletion, which has sparked a running debate about the importance of the Wikipedia entry, Deletionpedia, and the sources that reference it. For the time being, you can read the current version of the Deletionpedia entry, while the Wikipedia editors carry on the debate."

Hmm...

So that's like... meta-deletion?

Re:Hmm...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. There are too many deletion-happy admins at Wikipedia speedy deleting way too many pages that people have put a lot of effort into. And the deletion review process is a crock. The people who regularly check in on deletion review pages are the same people who delete as many pages as they can, so they will almost always vote for a page to stay deleted. Anybody else who speaks up in support of a page will get ignored because they're not one of the group, and if they're not an active Wikipedia member, they'll get labeled a sock-puppet, whether or not there's any evidence whatsoever that they are not a real person. And in my experience, the admins consider online-sources to be non-notable, and print sources to be too difficult to track down, so it's a catch-22. It makes creating pages on Wikipedia far more effort than it's worth.

Re:Deleting ANYTHING? Really?

If you saw some of the absolute crap that comes in as new articles on an hourly basis, you would quickly see the merit of deleting at least a few things. I've lost count of how many articles about garage bands that formed a month ago, childish "_____ is the coolest person ever!!!", vanity articles, and loony diatribes that I've marked for speedy deletion.

Deletionism?

The politically correct term is "Intelligent Unpublishing".

Easy.

Is the website notable? Has the mainstream media reported on it? Does it meet the requirements listed in WP:WEB, the guideline for website notability?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web) [wikipedia.org]

This should be all anyone needs to know to !vote on the issue. There is no 'special pass' for things that have been on Slashdot, or are about Wikipedia.

Easy...to game

So you're saying that all you have to do is pass some 'notability' threshold, or buy the necessary media coverage (don't bore me with claims of journalistic integrity), and you're done?
Great. We all know what kind of site Wikipedia has evolved into, we just haven't settled on the price.

Nope.

Wikipedia's notability guideline (note it's not actually an official policy) has all sorts of loopholes built in to it to allow a clique of editors to kill something they don't like. In this case, they would argue that Deletionpedia was not really notable in and of itself, but was only notable because of some notable incident which might be worthy of having a separate article (but that article would likely never be written, or would itself be deleted on some other grounds).

Deleting Deletionpedia...

Don't even have to buy it. From doing a Google News search, it looks to me like the controversy over deleting the Deletionpedia entry is going to make it notable even if it didn't start out that way.

In fact, the fact that the controversy over deleting the deletionpedia page is itself notable makes me very tempted to write a Wikipedia article "Deletionpedia Deletion Controversy"...

On the other hand, I guess that might be pushing it a little too far, though.

Paradox!

But what if an article should ever be deleted from Deletionpedia?

I sense the LHC is becoming redundant here!

Unfortunately Wikipedia is going to the dogs

I really love Wikipedia and I sure hope I'm wrong, but I think we've seen Wikipedia at it's peek. As with many ventures that become successful they move from innovation to stability and with that become widely popular which creates new pressures and brings in other interests, and then in turn leads to the degradation of the service as people squabble about how things should be done. I've seen this with special interest groups and clubs of all kinds. It can be particularly difficult to counter. An organisation either survives these things and becomes stronger for the learning the members have done, or else it succumbs to the storm of shite and fades into insignificance.

Self-criticism essential in community encyclopedia

Shortly thereafter, the Industry Standard again turned its attention to Deletionpedia, reporting that deletion of the article in Wikipedia about Deletionpedia was itself under discussion, suggesting that the article was not being considered for deletion based on "insignificance of the site" but rather "due to perceived criticism of Wikipedia itself."

If the highlighted phrase is true, then it indicates that the high priests at Wikipedia are totally beyond control and beyond the pale.

There is no more important function in a community encyclopedia than self-criticism. It is part of its foundation, a self-referential examination of its integrity and transparency.

I am really hoping that that line from TFA is false, and that the discussion about deleting the Deletionpedia page from Wikipedia is unambiguously declared invalid by WP editors.

Delete it

It needs to be deleted, just to ensure that it ends up in Deletionpedia.

Why not fork it?

Make an Includopedia and a Deletepedia. That way everyone is happy.

The debate is over, article will not be deleted

The debate is over. The result of the discussion was keep. See talk page [wikipedia.org].

Re:The debate is over, article will not be deleted

Technically, the result of the debate was "no consensus", which means that they won't delete it. But it's not that they decided to keep it, it's that they couldn't agree enough to delete it.

Those articles have been deleted...

We apologise again for the fault in the deletion. Those articles mentioning the deletion of the articles that have just been deleted, have been deleted.

Interesting suggestion in the AfD comments

One thing I noticed in the AfD comments that seems like a pretty good idea was to have any Wikipedia articles that get deleted be instead transwikied to Deletionpedia.

Naturally, that's not as good as not deleting them from Wikipedia in the first place...but it seems to me that at least it solves the problem of the work being lost entirely when the AfD finishes and the article is sent into the aether.

Dan Aris

A good wiki with a bad version control system

The whole debate is caused - IMHO - by having a bad versioning system as the Wikipedia's backend. Deleting and undeleting whole articles should be as transparent and open as deleting and undeleting paragraphs within an article. The history feature provides such transparency. Currently, instead, deleted articles are zapped: inaccesible, unreadable, unrecoverable. Allowing history access (and an option in "advanced search") for deleted articles would make this issue a lot simpler.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition

Wikipedia has competition. The problem is pagerank. Google calculates pagerank on the basis of the site, not individual pages. Wikipedia has a ridiculously overinflated page rank -- especially when you consider many individual entries are total crap.

In most cases there are better quality pages available, however the Wikipedia page will be in the top 10 of search results, no matter how good or bad it is.

It's Google that needs competition. That will stop monopolies in a number of areas -- not just Wikipedia.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs competition

What I think the poster meant was for there to be a site like Wikipedia that was A) A Wiki and B) Had information about all kinds of things, while still being C) Somewhat serious. And there really isn't any other place. Granted, there are a lot of good Wikis for various things, just about every major game has one, and I use LyricWiki (whenever it isn't down) to check for lyrics. But there isn't one good place to get all kinds of information that is freely editable except for Wikipedia. Also, compared to most other sites Wikipedia is fast to load and doesn't have all the ads.

Re:Ugh.

The problem with deleting articles on Wikipedia is that as long as it isn't spam it should honestly have a place in Wikipedia. When it comes down to it, a few kilobytes of information even on every single SourceForge project is unlikely to amount to more than a terabyte or two. I'm all for deleting spam but even small 200-500 word articles on something that isn't spam should be kept. And unlike a print encyclopedia where a few more pages could really add up, I doubt that even a terabyte of HD space or a gigabyte of bandwidth more is going to make much of a difference.

Re:something to say != something relevant

People like you are why Wikipedia is a failure if what it had intended to be.

How many people have to find something relevant or useful in order to stop it from being deleted from Wikipedia?

A hundered? A thousand? A million?

Nothing like that. Wikipedia is controlled by those what get off on deleting the work of other's, ignoring 'notability' or 'value' or 'usefulness' or 'relevance' entirely. If these few high priests of Wikipedia deem an article, whether it's about Pokemon or CNN, to be something they have a personal bias against, it will be deleted.

Frankly, it seems like Wikipedia has about as much credibility these days as Fox News.

So, that might be an interesting question: Given the fact that Wikipedia is controlled by a very few people with a very narrow view of what's notable, and use that to control what information is contained in Wikipedia, regardless of the truth, veracity, or notability of that information, should Wikipedia be regarded as a source of useful information, or as a propaganda machine to be avoided at all costs?

It's a painful question to have to ask - at one time, I espoused Wikipedia as, well, one of the best examples of the strengths of the internet.

More and more, however, I'm finding that, given the nature of those in control of Wikipedia... I just don't know anymore.

Re:something to say != something relevant

Frankly, it seems like Wikipedia has about as much credibility these days as Fox News.

Hmmm, actually Fox News has more credibility.

The bias on Fox is overt and wholly transparent. The bias on Wikipedia is covert and secretive, though it is of course even more biased and manipulated than Fox.

Re:I'm a confirmed WP deletionist

The problem with that is, what does that gain Wikipedia? Nothing. It loses facts. Granted, they might be badly written, or some might be poorly-researched, but deletion doesn't gain Wikipedia anything. Granted, deleting obvious spam written like an advertisement gains Wikipedia something, but deleting articles gains Wikipedia nothing

Ok, I'll admit, it might save them a few kilobytes of bandwidth or a gigabyte of storage, but honestly, bandwidth and storage are dirt cheap these days.

Re:I'm a confirmed WP deletionist

Well... it's not your statue, remember it.