2008/7/20 Achille achille.listserv@gmail.com:
geni:
See: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html (Ideas we are looking to sponsor)
- More open alternatives to Wikipedia. Deletionists rule Wikipedia. Ironically, they're constrained by print-era thinking. What harm does it do if an online reference has a long tail of articles that are only interesting to a few people, so long as everyone can still find whatever they're looking for? There is room to do to Wikipedia what Wikipedia did to Britannica.
Yes it's called the world wide web.
Can't Britannica argue the same thing about wikipedia?
Um no. Remember it wasn't wikipedia that killed Britannica. Encarta saw to that before the web got going.
why don't we enable access to deleted content ?
Because the deletion database is lousy with copyvios libel and privacy violations.
Then purge all the libels and delete the 'non notables'
That sounds like effort so no.
Or simply don't delete the non notables, but mark them as such.
Hey you are free to hang out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPages and copy anything you think will be deleted for lack of notability.
See your argument might have some validity if the cost in man minutes to maintain content was zero (particularly when you throw in things like NPOV). It is not. Nor is wikipedia a free web host.