What were you hoping to see? Obviously, either some sound peer-reviewed research displaying that "deletionists" suffer from deep-seated psychological problems that make them clinically unfit to work on a collaborative project; or some sound peer-reviewed research displaying that "inclusionists" suffer from some other, similarly severe, deep-seated psychological problems. I'm not sure which of the two you're fishing for, though. Cheers, David... On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 1:53 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern(a)gwern.net> wrote:

On 4/13/13, Gwern Branwen <gwern(a)gwern.net> wrote: I think there is actually a sensible middle ground, which gets lost because those with more extreme views are more vocal. That is similar to politics in a way. And why would you think that inclusionism/deletionism debates are intractable? I thought the idea that such terms should be avoided (as they are divisive) was taking hold and gaining ground? Carcharoth

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 6:42 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote: We're getting a bit far afield (I was just hoping for some citations to academic research I could look up), but since you asked... My own impression was that the debates were never resolved so much as the inclusionists driven out. Just look at the editor population numbers from the last 9 years, since 2006, or look at the article growth rates. Has the Foundation succeeded in keeping the editor population from dropping (never mind growing, or growing as fast as the Internet)? I've tracked some of the public goals and they've failed entirely. If you hear silence, it may be the silence of the content, happily cooperating as they beaver away at their particular articles - or it may be the silence of the grave. Why do you never hear complaints from inclusionists about Star Wars articles being deleted? Because so many were deleted that the involved editors finally bit the bullet and escaped to Wikia, and the only ones that are left are either ones onboard with rigid constrictive policies or have seen their efforts fail and learned to comply with the current regime. What happened with Star Wars could be said of many of the Wikias. (One of the more amusing Wikipedia conspiracy theories I've seen is that Wales & Angela deliberately encouraged or let En slide towards deletionism because it provided a demand for his Wikia startup. I doubt they intended any such thing, but the effect was the same.) And after a while, people have enough run-ins with Wikipedians or hear about such run-ins that they learn Wikipedia is no longer friendly to a wide variety of topics and to not even try, so one then cannot even point to content-generating communities migrating off Wikipedia because the communities have learned to not use Wikipedia in the first place but use Wikia or any of the many other options available. Hence, an 'evaporative cooling' of participants (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lr/evaporative_cooling_of_group_beliefs/) as editors leave. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:54 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: Indeed, that was my point. I don't think they did anything, or intended anything of the kind, but they chose not to intervene back when the gradual slide could have been stopped and so the ultimate effect was much the same. (Amusingly eventually leading to a nasty surprise for Jimbo with Mzoli's.) -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:34 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Of course they *could* have tried. What we'll never know is if they would have succeeded, because they didn't try. Gardner and the Foundation seemed to eventually realize the problem, but eh, barn doors and horses. On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:39 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: Managing the herd is what leaders were for. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 8:34 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: He certainly could have intervened in the arb com cases where I was vilified for my VfD comments, which I guess would be characterized as "inclusionist".

On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 8:59 AM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Granted. If I knew now what I knew then... Well, I probably just would have left sooner. But the overarching focus of both arb com cases was surrounding VfD. As for the correlation of the "oh shit graph" to inclusionism/deletionism: A restriction of new article creation to registered users only was put in place in December 2005." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia ) In December 2005, there is a sharp spike in "active editors", and a sharp decline in 1-year retention. I would say that is at least partially a direct result.

Looking more at this, it seems that Wales has been given "credit" for exactly this intervention: "Wales has, in the past, instructed Wikimedia's system administrators to implement software changes that constitute de facto Wikipedia policy changes. For instance, in December 2005, in response to the Seigenthaler incident, Wales removed the ability of unregistered users to create new pages on the English-language Wikipedia. This change was proposed as an "experiment", but has been in place ever since." We have Wales to "thank" for the absurd "Articles for Creation" process (Is that still around? I haven't checked in a long time.). Seems to me that constitutes a "significant role in debates over inclusion deletion".

On 14 April 2013 14:29, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'll also note that I suspect opening up article creation to anons again will be impossible within the community - because they actually wanted to lock it down even further, and the Foundation stepped in and said "no, keep it open". - d.

On 14 April 2013 14:29, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think you mean "failure of management".

On 15 April 2013 16:49, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: Ergo, better management was required. Describing the current mess that is the English Wikipedia as having "a system of self-management" is generous.

Don't get your panties in a bunch, David. "Quote-mining"? What is this, Usenet?

I came here in 2006, and one of the things i wanted to do was to write about things I considered important. I very quickly found that these topics were considered less than notable by those people active in deciding whether to keep articles. I soon realized I would not get far arguing for my specific topics to be better covered, as there were too few people interested in doing the work for them,. I deliberately adopted a general position of strong inclusionism in the hope that those interested in other topics often considered non-notable would also work for a general relaxation of standards, and thus include my topics also. My catchphrase was that we needed to have tolerance for each others' interests. And so it proved: the very restrictive arguments common then are rarely heard at present. On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net> wrote: -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

Together with the Arbitration Committee Jimbo initiated the Biographies of living persons policy. His involvement in deletion was with respect to pseudo-scientific physics theories. Fred

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern(a)gwern.net> wrote: IIRC, some key inflection points on the "oh shit graph" match up fairly closely with the elimination of article creation by "anonymous" users.

On 14 April 2013 11:44, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: When people from TV come asking for a (quote) "passionate deletionist" - http://www.mail-archive.com/wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg01448.html - we're well past the time of being able to talk sensibly in such polar terms. - d.

On 14 April 2013 12:24, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: I didn't see you in that thread ... who were you thinking of? I favour James Forrester and Thomas Dalton's arguments here: http://www.mail-archive.com/wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg01454.html - that Wikipedia started as anything-goes, this was severely cut back and we're now closer to a nuanced equilibrium. - d.

On 14 April 2013 14:24, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: There's something about the whole process that's catnip for people who desperately want nothing more from life than a real-world game of Nomic. This was obvious by 2004, when we were still in many ways working out from first principles how to write an encyclopedia. - d.