G'day Phil,
On Sep 24, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Oldak Quill wrote:
I don't think deletionists come to Wikipedia
to delete. Perhaps
they
have a strict idea of what should be in an
encyclopedia (based on
print encyclopedias), and since pop culture does not fit into this
model, they wage war against these articles?
I think deletionists don't come
to Wikipedia at all - I've never
encountered a non-editor who is bothered by the strange stuff on
Wikipedia. To most people outside the bubble, it seems to be one of
our most beloved features.
Deletionists are made, not born. Well, maybe ...
I used to be very hot on the idea of deleting stuff I didn't like --- whether it was
because it was insufficiently notable, or not a good enough article, or I just didn't
like the colour. I think part of it was I had this idea of Wikipedia being an attempt to
reproduce a traditional encyclopaedia, except written by the masses (in the same way, it
took me a fair while to get used to the reference fetish when it arrived). If anything as
time goes by, I've become *more* eventualist, *more* happy to let sub-standard
articles lie and hope that they get better over time. This was partly because I learnt
more about the ideals of the project, but mostly because I became disillusioned with how
poorly thought-out the rationales of deletionists tended to be, and by how little time
they were willing to spend thinking about things before flipping the kill switch.
However, I *can* see how events might take one the opposite way. When you consider that
over time, Wikipedians tend to develop more pride and more feelings of ownership, and get
more of a sense that they are responsible for the state of the encyclopaedia, it becomes
more important to them that it be perfect *now*. This means: no poorly-written articles
(in other words: no works-in-progress). This means: No articles on embarrassing subjects
like pop culture (in other words: none of our most popular work).
Deletionism seems to be an internal phenomenon - a
switch that gets
thrown in some editors where they come to the conclusion that
deletion
is necessary to improve the project. But it's an internal phenomenon
-
something Wikipedia seems to provoke in editors who have been here
after a while.
I've found that, since I stopped contributing to the project and started approaching
it only as a reader, that I've gone a long way away from deletionism. I find, as a
reader, there are very few subjects I'd be surprised or disappointed to find are
included in Wikipedia (they do exist, mostly in pop culture: when I go to read about
something I'm unfamiliar with, and find unhelpful, in-universe drivel instead). For
the most part, I'm surprised and disappointed *not* to be able to learn about
something esoteric or less notable than some what prefer.
A big, broad, wonderful WIkipedia: readers love it. As readers ourselves, we should know
this by now.
Cheers,
--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
http://formonelane.net/
"Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor." --- Count Duckula