[WikiEN-l] Psychological correlates of deletionism/inclusionism?

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 6:42 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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?

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