[WikiEN-l] AfD Threshold being Revised Downward Again?

Tue Sep 20 19:25:56 UTC 2005

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> A couple of days ago I was on the verge of taking this matter very
> seriously.
>
> Then I looked at the net growth rate of the Wikipedia page count. Around
> 1500 new pages per day remaining undeleted after seven days. I compared it
> to the sclerotic maximum capacity of Articles for Deletion (AfD) (average of
> 112 listings per day early June to early September) and the fact that AfD
> participants complain bitterly about their inability to keep up with AfD at
> present.
>
Tony's observation reminds me of a question I've pondered off & on over
the last couple of months, which I'm adding to the mail list on the off
chance someone may want to study it.

Simply put: is there a point in Wikipedia's size where it's current growth
will taper off or stop? I don't mean to repeat the old chestnut that
knowledge is somehow finite: put in different words, is there a certain
point where contributors will find it far easier to work on existing
articles than to contribute new ones?

(This is a problem that I doubt we'll encounter until Wikipedia reaches
somewhere between 5 & 10 million articles, but I think it is a potential
problem.)

> Bottom line: AfD doesn't scale. Whatever problems may exist with AfD's
> tendency to randomly delete a selection of perfectly reasonable articles,
> and VFU's growing unwillingness to rectify this, the problem will decrease
> in significance in the long term as page creation rates accelerate
> inexorably beyond the reach of AfD, and possibly even any defensible
> extension of speedy deletion.

If there is such a tipping point, we may find that AfD (in whatever form
it has at the time) not only will be able to keep up with the flow, but
may actually reduce the size of Wikipedia!

Nevertheless, I admit Tony addresses a problem that will likely be seen
far sooner than mine.

Geoff