They say too many chefs spoil the broth but somehow Wikipedia has found a way to create the world’s largest encyclopedia through the collaborative effort of millions of people from around the world. It is a miracle that almost twenty million users have been able to cooperate with each other online in order to produce Wikipedia’s four million articles.
But they can’t all get along all the time and like any other community, Wikipedians have their fair share of divisions and conflicts.
Yet, perhaps there is no other debate that challenges the basic philosophy of Wikipedia and has the potential to change and even destroy what has been one of the most successful Internet projects in the history of the Internet than the deletionism vs. inclusionism debate.
This debate emerged when Wikipedians began to have contrasting visions of what they wanted Wikipedia to be. Questions were raised over what material should be included and what makes a topic or an article appropriate for Wikipedia. In response to these questions, the Wikipedian community was generally divided into two camps – the deletionists and the inclusionists.
In a 2009 article published by the Guardian, Bobbie Johnson said,
On one side stand the deletionists, whose motto is “Wikipedia is not a junkyard”; on the other, the inclusionists, who argue that “Wikipedia is not paper.”
It appears that Wikipedia does not currently have an official stance on this debate. However they do state in their policy, “What Wikipedia is not”, that
The amount of information on Wikipedia is practically unlimited, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and therefore does not aim to contain all data or expression found elsewhere on the Internet.
In this policy they also provide an exhaustive list of eighteen things that they are not. For example, they say they are not; a dictionary, publisher of original thought, soapbox, directory, manual, textbook, scientific journal, newspaper and interestingly, they say they are not a crystal ball.
Although Wikipedia does not have an official policy, it appears they err more towards the side of the deletionists. This leaning towards stricter regulations on editing and contributing has been noticed by a fair number of Wikipedians, from as early as 2008, and it has had a significant impact on Wikipedia’s growth.
As the graph shows, the number of new Wikipedians who stay to make more than ten edits as well as active Wikipedians (five edits per month) have dropped since their peak in 2007.
But why is deletionism having an impact on the number of Wikipedians?
According to Kerry Armstrong, the Vice President of Wikimedia Australia, acts of deletionism can be off-putting to editors who have volunteered their time and knowledge to write articles which they thought were important and notable. Armstrong says it can be especially discouraging for new editors or even for female editors, as the deletion often occurs without explanation and arguments with other Wikipedians over their articles could become abrasive.
That [deletionism] is the thing that can upset someone who has put that information in good faith to have that deleted quickly without any explanation, is exactly what is going to be an off-putting behaviour.
But Armstrong also notes there are valid points in the arguments made by deletionists, particularly ones concerning quality control.
But equally when people who do that kind of sudden deletion… they are people who say, ‘hang on, this is an encyclopaedia, what this person wrote was not good enough. They didn’t provide a citation and we cannot leave that sort of information in our encyclopaedia.’ So it’s that quality. The people who engage in this rather abrupt sort of behaviour are doing it in the belief that they are doing it for maintaining the quality of the encyclopaedia.
And they, like everybody else, are volunteers and they have only got so much hours of the day and they kind of think, ‘why should I spend an hour going back and forth with someone over something that is not good enough when there are other things that I could be doing.’ It’s that kind of tension.
She provides an example of when perhaps deleting information on Wikipedia may be appropriate.
…it will be about a small town where you get chitter chatter, ‘we’ve got a woolsworths, we’ve got a post office, we’ve got a dominos pizza’, you’ve got to ask is that really what we want in an encyclopaedia. Possibly not.
For Armstrong, the answer to this debate lies somewhere in the middle of both extremes.
She suggests creating a ‘high bar’ for high quality articles and a ‘low bar’ for low quality articles. Meaning, for extensive articles that have been clearly the work of several experts and consisting of several hundred citations, any addition or edit made to this page must be of a very high quality. But for topics that have not been covered or those shorter articles that only have a few references, any input that is still factually correct and cited but not particularly illuminating or important should be published in Wikipedia in order to encourage more readers to become editors.
The less extreme and more conciliatory approach is attracting a growing number of Wikipedians who are tiring of a debate that has increasing become virulent in nature. For example, the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians (ADW) their Code of Deletionism includes
Thou shalt not tolerate an Inclusionist to include worthless screed, lest we become an Uncyclopedia.
Logo of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, published under CC licence
Growing tired of the hostilities that were growing in the Wikipedian community, a new association has been established for those members who do not entirely support either sides but find merits in each of their arguments.
Logo of the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn’t Mean They Are Deletionists
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, under CC licence
They are the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgements About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but ThatDoesn’t Mean They Are Deletionists and their goals are
Judge not, lest ye be judged. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love thy neighbour as thyself.
Logo of Association of inclusionist Wikipedians
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, published under CC licence
There are around four hundred members of the AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTAD, and whilst that may be far from the thousand members that comprise the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians, they are now around four times the size of the Association of Deletionist Wikipedians.
AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTAD member, Ojay123 states he joined this association because he identifies the solution lies with merging the ideas of the deletionists and inclusionsts.
I’m tired of seeing new pages deleted without regards to how the article can be fixed. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia, it can include articles that aren’t often in real paper encyclopedias. This doesn’t mean that articles don’t need to be notable, but whether or not a topic is in Encyclopaedia Britannica, or any similar encyclopedia shouldn’t be a guideline between if a topic is notable. Wikipedia isn’t a traditional encyclopaedia. it’s special.
The Wikiverse 