[WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

Mon Sep 5 21:09:20 UTC 2005

Hi there,

 > because of the mob of pissy deletionists who dominate VfD

So I take it you are a pissy inclusionist then? :)

In all seriousness though it is a difficult issue. I think the more 
recent controversial ones like Stardestroyer.net (its 3rd VfD which 
finally resulted in its demise) and trekbbs one or whatever highlight 
this.

VfD itself is an interesting mentality that is really easy to get 
sucked into. Even though are many fairly notable websites that get 
canned because they fall just short of WB:WEB for example, many other 
articles that don't meet it get kept for other reasons, such as because 
they are entertaining (GNAA, List of Ethnic Stereotypes etc. etc.).

The system does work in a sense though. For example, a couple a put up 
there that were of somewhat non-notable websites, but were written very 
well, got deleted rather soundly with a surprising turnout given the 
subject matter (and some funny but demeaning jokes from the voters).

Of course, I say it works in the sense that you're making a strict 
encyclopedia, which tends to go against the wikiway (I mean the C2 
wikiway not the wikipedia wikiway :)). In fact when I first came to WP 
a long time ago I thought that was the way it worked... and was 
surprised to see VfD and other venues to removing content.

I myself got sucked into it earlier on (admittedly its quite fun and a 
great way to inflate your edit count), plus there are a lot of 
old-timers there (who probably are deletionists themselves ;)). Lately, 
I've been realizing that there needs to be more inclusionists voting 
there (although some self-described inclusionists seem to vote delete 
on everything anyway...).

Maybe it gets back to the old argument that you need people who are 
really familiar with the subject to judge it. Who knows... 