[WikiEN-l] Partial solution to rampant deletionism

[James Duffy]

>Lir wrote:
>I often find that many of the deletionists endorse and use this "policy":
>
>If an article is not up-to-date, NPOV, well-written, long enough, or 
>sufficiently accurate; then, it should be deleted. It is up to those who 
>vote "keep"; to render this article to a "proper" level of quality; 
>otherwise, it will be deleted.
>
>I think a statement by Jimbo, if he agrees, that it is up to the 
>deletionists to improve articles (rather than >deleting them) will be 
>somewhat useful for the non-deletionists. I am tired of seeing articles 
>listed for >deletion, simply because somebody thinks it "sucks"; I am tired 
>of being threatened, "You either improve >this article within the week; OR, 
>we are gonna kill it!"

I think an increasing use of deletion is a natural response to the growth in 
wikipedia, which as it takes shape  as a serious encyclopedia, has evolving 
boundaries and an envolving concept of what it is all about. Things that 
were crap were tolerated in the hope that /someday/ their saviour would come 
and rescue them and make them encyclopedic. But the higher the standards 
achieved now as wikipedia grows, the more articles once tolerated as 
passable (ie not hideously bad, just bad) fall off the edge and are seen as 
simply not good enough. So growing deletion of substandard articles is a 
natural part of the evolution of wikipedia from early draft encyclopedia to 
real attempt to create a real encyclopedic text.

Given all that, I do think deletion has for some users become a first 
response, not the last, which it should be. All too many articles are being 
put on wikipedia's VfD page because /one/ person has a problem with them or 
doesn't know anything about them. (A classic example was the proposed 
deletion of an article on a famous one-time winner of the World Snooker 
championships, someone known to millions worldwide but simply not known to 
Americans, therefore thought of as not warranting a page. Though to be fair, 
the proposer of this ludicrous deletion did realise from the laughter of the 
rest of the world that he had made a mistake. Not all proposers of loopy 
deletions accept that they made a mistake and crusade to delete perfectly 
fine articles simply because /they/ don't accept the article.

The Cunctator's idea that if one person opposed a deletion it should be 
stopped is farcical. Wikipedia does have a few people whose contribution to 
debates are 'whatever everyone else wants, I oppose just to be different'. 
If someone wrote an article [[Adolf Hitler was a nun]] the same small group 
would be out on the barricades defending it just to be different. They see 
wikipedia as some sort of game to wage extremist agendas, whether political, 
ideological or analytical. The rules being followed where high-threshholds 
are required for deletion (2/3 etc) are sensible and don't allow the 'watch 
me cause trouble' brigade to force wikipedia to keep nutty, absurd 
ridiculous articles, often through false names being created to allow 
multiple votes.

As to the victims of 9/11, there is not one iota of justification for 
keeping these articles on wikipedia. What happened on 9/11 was horrible, 
disgusting and outrageous, but wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a shrine. 
The US suffered a horrible experience but so have many nations and peoples 
have had just as horrific experiences, many indeed far far worse (the 
Holocaust, Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Hundred Years War, two World Wars, etc). 
Articles based on the Irish War of Independence that covered individuals 
murdered by the British or the IRA, ('Mickey O'Brien was a good man and 
father'; 'Sir Laurence O'Keeffe was a kind employer and father', etc) would 
deservedly be binned. America's traumatic experiences in /one/ series of 
incidents, which by world standards has a relatively small death toll, 
cannot be given 'special' treatment no matter how emotionally traumatic the 
impact on the US and its psyche. This is a world encyclopedia, not an 
American one, and cannot treat the life of one US victim as more worthy of 
attention than a Palestinian victim, an Israeli victim, a Holocaust victim, 
an Irish victim, a British victim, a Somali victim, a Chilean victim, etc. 
These pages give the impression that US victims are somehow /more important/ 
and in a special league to every other.

JT

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