[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Charles Matthews]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
> It is easier to attack than defend. If you want to justify high
> standards and removal, there are easy arguments: 'what if this could
> be another Seigenthaler?' 'what if this is fancruft Wikipedia will be
> criticized for including?'
>
> If you want to defend, you have... what? Even the mockery of _The New
> Yorker_ didn't convince several editors that [[Neil Gaiman]] should
> cover Scientology. There is no beacon example of deletionism's
> grievous errors.
>
>   
Deletions can be wrong, negative, thoughtless, whatever you want to call 
them. The whole inclusionism-deletionism row boils down, though, to the 
idea that _sometimes_ there is a tension between quality and quantity. 
Book authors know this. Non-paper hypertext authors probably have to 
learn it.  You can attribute bad editing to bad faith, or to a  bad 
wikiphilosophy, all you like. The discussion becomes sensible round 
about the point where the abstract ideas start to relate to the concrete 
realities of our "production process". The more we understand that, the 
more intelligent a discussion we can have about it.

The process does exhibit an asymmetry. The many, many thousands of cases 
where articles are wrongly deleted and then restored, or big cuts made 
and then reverted, are less damaging to Wikipedia's reputation than the 
specular examples where something was included wrongly? You bet. Ask 
[[Taner Akçam]].

Charles