[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Ryan Delaney wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 3:05 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 23 January 2010 23:00, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Repeat after me: Pure Wiki Deletion.
>>>       
>> Last time the subject came up, I believe the advocates were asked for
>> any examples, anywhere, of wikis that use Pure Wiki Deletion. I don't
>> think they came up with any at all.
>>
>> Are there any?
>>
>> (Is it possible that the biggest and most popular wiki in the world
>> might not be the best place to make the very first one?)
>>
>>     
>
> Not that I know of. Lomax made some interesting points though, and I
> want to carry that reasoning forward. 
Choose your allies with care, though.
> I think there are two compelling
> reasons to adopt PWD: (1) we have substantial evidence that a
> wiki-style content editing process is a successful way to build an
> encyclopedia because every other content decision we make uses that
> basic format... and look at all the wild success we've had with it.
> (2) The current deletion system is a failure, as it creates
> intractable problems like this one.
>   
I was thinking that the "meme that spreads like wildfire through a crowd 
of one person" deserved a name, and of course it has one as Dickens 
knew: [[wikt: King Charles' head]] (no relation).

There is certainly another perspective entirely on the current furore, 
which is that the absence of enough deletion has created the situation 
where people (David Goodman being an obviously honorable exception) 
volunteer the time of others by voting to keep articles, on the same 
rather anxious principle, that anything temporarily "lost" from 
Wikipedia is permanently lost from the world. Which is clearly absurd, 
stated in that way. The reason this matters, and maybe why this has come 
to a head now, is that we realise more clearly as time goes by that we 
have finite human resources to work with.

The goose and the golden eggs has always been a good fable to quote 
against those (outsiders usually) who say "Wikipedia would be great if 
only..." and then suggest something that obviously isn't going to work. 
Perhaps cleaning up after the goose also deserves a mention. In other 
words the vibrant business of article creation cannot be decreed to be 
an unmixed blessing. That has to be proved in practice. If too many of 
our good people are trying to source obscure biographies, then they are 
not doing something else which might suit them and the encyclopedia better.

Anyway I voted for the Jehochman RfC proposal, which has the mild 
sophistication of stealing one aspect of you want (I think).

Charles