From: Peter Ansell <ansell.peter(a)gmail.com>
Wikipedia needs to assert control over its
content once in a while.
The fact that the majority of most-frequented articles on wikipedia
are fiction means nothing to administrators who only care for the
project, as opposed to those readers who just use up bandwidth and
processing power on the server. It would be quite valuable to the
project to wipe out fiction articles as it would save heaps on monthly
bandwidth bills.
I actually can't tell whether this is intended as a serious position
statement or as an over-the-top parody of deletionism. If it's parody, good show. If
it's serious... good lord. _Our readers are not our enemies_. We're not some sort
of noble guardians of an ivory tower, trying to fight off hordes of yokels unworthy to
read our precious works of pure academia. There's no "Us" and
"Them" to insert a "versus" between. The more people that find value
in our content the better, no matter who they are.
If bandwidth reduction is so important, how about we require login to view our pages and
bounce non-logged-in viewers to
answers.com or one of our other mirrors? (Yes, it's a
ridiculous idea. I'm doing the parody thing there).
To satisfy my own curiosity
I just hist Random article 10 times, and
didn't even get a single article from anything that might be termed
fiction. The bulk of the bandwidth used in connection with fiction
articles appears to stem from the interminable crusades devoted to
ridding us of these articles, and the inevitable response from those who
seek to protect Wikipedia from this kind of depradation.
Ec