[RCom-l] Deletion of article on research consortium in WP

[Dario Taraborelli]

All,

I wanted to draw your attention on the recent deletion via WP:PROD [1] of an English Wikipedia article on a large EU research consortium called Open PHACTS [2]. Open PHACTS is a €16m EU-funded research project aiming to create an open body of pharmacological data [3]. It involves 22 partner institutions from research and industry and will run for 3 years. The article in the English Wikipedia was deleted with the following comment: "Nominated for seven days with no objection: concern was 'Ephemeral project. No independent sources, no indication of notability. Does not meet WP:GNG.'" 

There's something obviously broken in a process that ends up with a decision by a single editor to delete an article on a major EU research project involving hundreds of researchers and millions of taxpayer money by calling it "ephemeral" and "non notable". I am particularly worried by the double standards that we apply to popular indie rock bands with an active fan base (for which notable sources certainly abound) and projects of this kind. I am also worried that this deletionist turn may jeopardize the efforts that many among us are putting into finding effective ways to engage with the academic/expert community and increase their participation in Wikimedia projects. Our own Daniel Mietchen is starting to work with scholarly organizations to increase the visibility of open science articles in Wikipedia and just a few days ago a campus ambassador for the Global Education Program met with people from the National Academy of Science to discuss their institutional involvement in Wikimedia project.

I am confident the Open PHACTS article will be recreated with sourced and better materials, but I wanted to hear your thoughts on what RCom could do to make sure that research-related initiatives that deserve visibility on Wikipedia are not randomly deleted. There is a growing number of initiatives in our community to help companies make genuine contributions to Wikipedia, I wonder if it's not time to start thinking along the same lines for research-related contributions.

Dario

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PROD
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_PHACTS
[3] http://www.openphacts.org