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The Battle For Wikipedia's Soul

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the deleting-inclusions-or-including-deletions dept.

njondet recommends an article at The Economist that sheds light on the identity crisis faced by Wikipedia as it is torn between two alternative futures. "'It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between 'inclusionists,' who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries."

3 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. deletionists by deathtopaulw · · Score: 0, Troll

    are the scum of the earth
    watch as they mark every article relating to Gundam for deletion (easily the single most influential anime of all time), including the main
    but then they leave bucketfuls of TIE Fighter variations untouched

    good job biased assholes

  2. Re:What's the deletionist justification? by Deanalator · · Score: 1, Troll

    My problem is that it often goes beyond what is just "trivial". Many (most that I have seen) wikipedia editors end up getting a huge power fix on being able to decide what knowledge does and does not belong in the human knowledge base.

    For example, until VERY recently, there were no mentions anywhere on wikipedia that there was any controversy on what happened on 9-11. I came to wikipedia to get my facts straight, but instead, everything was one sided. Everything that got added mentioning the existence of the controversy got immediately deleted as conspiracy theorist nonsense, even though there are huge articles on things like Roswell and Bigfoot.

    Also notice, there is no mention of the GNAA on wikipedia. There are mentions of less significant groups that are far more sketchy, and also many pages about less significant hacker groups from history, as well as many pages for other groups with initials GNAA, even though when you search google, the troll group is far more relevant. The fact is that they trolled wikipedia, pissed off some editors, and the editors decided to take it upon themselves to will the group out of existence.

    The worst kind of censorship comes from groups that claim that their goal is freedom of information.

  3. Re:What's the deletionist justification? by Gumshoe · · Score: 1, Troll

    I suspect that the main reason is a lot less noble: "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and petty power corrupts completely out of proportion to the actual power."

    I agree. The current state of Wikipedia is a brilliant example of how authoritarians always manage to worm their way into power and ruin it for everyone else. A Tragedy of the Commons of the Internet age.

    That's why I've made a principal decision to never again contribute to Wikipedia: doing so would mean engaging in petty power games with deletionists and other control freaks, so why bother ?

    I'm of the same opinion. But then again, that's how authoritarians always win.