

Wikipedia dwm article deletion: No consensus - tshtf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Flyguy649/Dwm

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kiba
Wikipedia's deletion policies has lead to wiki forks of various kind such as
the webcomic encyclopedia, Comixpedia. It was also one of the reason why I
choose to create a niche encyclopedia just for open source games.

However, I choose to look at it as a benefit rather than a negative. A subject
that is not well known is more likely to be vandalized over time then expanded
by editors.

A specialized wiki that has a sense of ownership from its editor will be far
more successful at preventing long-term vandalism and neglect.

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snprbob86
Support the Article Rescue Squadron!
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Rescue_Squadron>

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zck
This was very nice to read. In my experience with articles for deletion, I've
never seen the closing administrator's reasons laid out like this. I hope this
happens more often than it used to.

~~~
gwern
It won't happen more often because a page like that is a massive timesink. I'd
bet that Flyguy649 has spent at a minimum 3 or 4 hours reviewing comments,
doing some searches, writing this up, and so on.

(It's easy to be cynical and say "good! If admins have to invest 3 or 4 hours
on each article they delete, then Wikipedia will be better for't", but really,
most articles on AfD deserve to be deleted and asking 3 or 4 hours of each
admin per AfD is a good way to destroy Wikipedia.)

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lmkg
I've heard it claimed that democracy tends to achieve the correct decision in
the long run, but with the drawback of taking a lot of time and effort. This
case is certainly supporting evidence for all of those points.

~~~
Perceval
Wikipedia's AFD procedure is explicitly not democratic. The voting does not
determine the outcome--it's a heuristic meant to help the admin. The criterion
for keeping or deleting is consensus and the weight of the arguments on either
side (insofar as they are relevant to Wikipedia's general principles). Do not
mistake this admin's overview for a summary of a vote--it is not a democracy,
and that's not a bad thing.

~~~
lmkg
Whether it's a democracy depends on what you think a democracy is. My view is
that a democracy is a system where all voices are encouraged to speak up, are
heard, given due consideration, and approved or rejected by a community. The
whole voting thing is one particular implementation of democracy. It's not
necessarily a good approximation of those democratic ideals, but it's
practical and it scales well, which makes it Good Enough(tm). Wikipedia's
policy of considering arguments rather than votes for page-level decisions is
something I would call more democratic than straight-up vote-counting, given
the scale that it operates at, the strict (and explicit--rule of law is
important) guidelines by which positions are weighed, and the general good-
faith of those making the judgments.

YMMV. The definition of democracy is probably worth a thread in its own right.
However, regardless of whatever label we each choose to call those policies,
we're in accord that those policies are generally well-designed.

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ahi
jezus. who has time for that shit. wp has been overrun by vogons.

~~~
tptacek
No, Wikipedia has been overrun by people who dedicate a spectacular amount of
time trying to build an encyclopedia according to a fairly rigid set of rules
that has successfully built one of the Internet's signature resources entirely
on volunteer effort.

In 2010AD, the Wikilawyers have amassed a large amount of evidence that the
Wikicritics lack: an actual encyclopedia that, despite virtually _owning_ the
front page of Google, has not been gamed into irrelevance.

I take that evidence into account, and the amount of effort WP volunteers
clearly put into the project, and come to the conclusion that they should get
a whole hell of a lot more slack than they appear to get on fora like this.

~~~
kiba
Whatever wikipedia volunteers did not choose to write about in open source
gaming, I swallowed their long tail!

So in short, whenever wikipedia choose to write about something, they
dominate. Whenever they choose not to write about, a niche wiki filled it.

