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Saving Geek Lore and Other Wikipedia Castoffs
Ian Lamont notes an Industry Standard feature on Deletionpedia — a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia editors eventually deemed fan fiction, inadequately sourced, or otherwise lacking. Looking through the collection of removed articles, it's apparent that entertaining minutiae are often the target of Wikipedia editors: "Geek lore seems to be a particular target for deletion, with the deleted page of the month a comprehensive guide to 'Weapons of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000)'. Deletionpedia provides links back to the Wikipedia deletion discussions, which are a lesson in magnification of minutiae; the Warhammer page was removed due to philosophical disagreements over what can be considered credible source material, while a page listing every chalkboard gag in The Simpsons opening credits spent 691 days on the site before being deleted as 'fancruft.'" Note that while Deletionpedia uses MediaWiki, it doesn't have wiki functionality — readers can't alter or update archived entries.
Yup, it's slashdotted. I think this is a fantastic idea, though. As someone who has added a few pages to Wikipedia over the years, and who's had to try to get some page deletions overturned, I can tell you it's a huge pain when some overzealous admin comes along and speedy deletes a page that multiple people have worked on, and has been online for over a year. Wikipedia needs a better deletion review policy. Maybe this site will help illustrate that.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
No, just that many "Wikipedia Admins" (as opposed to active editors who don't seek special status) are sewer rejects who flock to Wikipedia because it lets them abuse power. Deletionists especially are a fucking retarded subclass of the rest, whose sole contribution to society is deleting something someone else did.
Wikipedia rocks. It's too bad so many people are dedicated to pissing all over it.
I am inclined to agree. I'd rather have too much stuff and the problem of organizing it than too little. I find Wikipedia's standard of relevance occasionally capricious and arbitrary.
I'd rather that data that has a narrow and specific audience get factored into subarticles rather than deleted. After all, someone worked to bring the data into a presentable format. Deletion serves nobody except the lazy and uninterested. A "see also" type link which points to the true esoteric information would serve the hard-core.
There's not even a compelling bandwidth argument. The notion of whether something is encyclopedic might make sense when drawing a cut line for a print edition, but sending an elaborate 404 page isn't much different than sending a narrow-interest article in terms of bandwidth.
I guess what I am getting at is that filtering for quality is often more likely to be objective than subjective, filtering for relevance is sometimes a bit subjective, and filtering for appeal is much more so. High quality contributions are valuable, regardless of the broadness of their appeal. There are media for which it makes sense to draw a cut line, but a search driven electronic format isn't so constrained.
I don't see what Wikipedia loses by keeping around narrow-interest articles as long as they're factual and neutral. If I happen to catalog all of the chalkboard gags, that takes nothing away from anything else. Sure, it won't be a featured article of the day. So what?
Wikipedia does lose when there's a large number of truly worthless or misleading articles. Those should get the axe. But those are worthless or misleading because their data is absent or inaccurate. I imagine sheer peer recognition of their crumminess would force them out of commission.
Program Intellivision!