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

[David Gerard]

On 14 April 2013 01:29, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 7:54 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:

>> Jimbo and Angela did not play a significant role in debates over
>> inclusion and deletion

> Indeed, that was my point. I don't think they did anything, or
> intended anything of the kind, but they chose not to intervene back
> when the gradual slide could have been stopped and so the ultimate
> effect was much the same. (Amusingly eventually leading to a nasty
> surprise for Jimbo with Mzoli's.)


You're assuming they could have, and that this would have been worth
doing. I don't think there's any reasonable basis for such an
assumption, as it carries the implicit assumption that we understood
Wikipedia well enough to make that sort of intervention, and that's
definitely false. I still don't think we really know quite how this
damn thing works, for all the millions of words wasted on the effort,
and I don't consider the many incompatible hypotheses of how it does
cohere to form evidence otherwise.


- d.