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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."
But what if an article should ever be deleted from Deletionpedia?
I sense the LHC is becoming redundant here!
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
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.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
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.
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.
In fact, the English Wikipedia does appear to be just past it's growth peak right now.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I had high hopes for Citizendium, but wikis thrive on drive-by editing, and I don't think Citizendium allows that. It sure hasn't gotten anywhere much in the year it's been running, and it's woefully incomplete.
What really gets me about wikipedia is stuff like I Am Rich. Nominated for deletion, the consensus wound up being to keep it. Not to redirect it but to keep it. Then, the nominator, having failed in his attempt to delete it, merges it, despite consensus to the contrary, into App Store. Later, another user comes along and deletes it, saying it's "not important".
But wait - it gets better! The same guy nominates Heavy Metal (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) for deletion and fails in his attempt. So what does he do? Merges every episode, save that one, into List of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes. You see - this user knows he couldn't get consensus by an AfD so he engages in backroom deals to gain support.
Of course, none of this tops Torchic. A front page featured article with 20 paragraphs and 46 citations now reduced to redirecting to a list of pokemon, with 2-3 paragraphs (depending on whether or not a one sentence paragraph counts) and no citations. Amazing stuff.
really a social experiment that's going into uncharted territory
What part of basic organizational behavior do you find so uncharted?
An orthodoxy evolves, controlled by a core group, and heretics are pilloried.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Hell, I changed the capitalization of a word in the article regarding the Bill of Rights, (People to people), and it was marked as vandalism. Turned me off to editing on Wikipedia right off the bat.
I probably wouldn't have minded it that much if I hadn't used a photograph of the actual document and the transcript from the National Archives as the reference. When something can get marked as vandalism, and you are tidying up an entry and using the freaking original in the Archives as a source... just pissed me off.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj